This chapter seeks to illuminate the development of racialized subjectivities as an historical problem in nineteenth-century Brazil. It analyzes the letters and writings of the Afro-descendant engineer and abolitionist André Rebouças (1838–1898), with special attention to the role of racial silence in Rebouças’ personal diary and in the edited papers of his father, lawyer and statesman Antônio Pereira Rebouças (1798–1880). The self-narratives André Rebouças left to posterity are powerful testimony to the significance of transnational politics for universalist Black intellectuals in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. In exploring them, this chapter illuminates the racialized subjectivization engendered by the stigma of slavery and portrays the ways in which its politicization was shaped by a collective transnational experience.

This chapter explores the history of Recife’s abolitionist newspaper O Homem and the bold racial politics of its founder, offering a fresh perspective on how the ferment of the abolition debates set in motion important shifts in racial subjectivities. Yet O Homem’s story calls attention to the important nineteenth-century history of racial silencing, which was an ideology and cultural process that shaped power relations. The paper’s founder, Felipe Neri Collaço, illuminated the racialized work that this ideology did in suppressing debates on hierarchy, politics, and, by extension, slavery. O Homem’s history also helps us better understand how the “breaking of this silence” sparked noticeable shifts in racial subjectivities, thus rewriting the racial narrative.

Focusing on the life trajectory of Brazilian engineer Teodoro Sampaio, this chapter discusses the possibilities for social transformation available to men of color during and after Brazilian abolition. Sampaio lived through a time when the dismantling of slavery coincided with a racialization of social status, justified by the postulates of scientific racism. His trajectory thus illuminates how an educated son of a freed mother could make his way through a society that was reinventing socio-racial hierarchies even as slavery lost its legitimacy. This chapter aims to elucidate the intricate network of relationships and endeavors engendered by a pardo, born on a large slave property, who managed to become an engineer and manumit his three brothers, who were enslaved on the same plantation where Sampaio himself was raised free. Based on Sampaio’s autobiographical texts, books, articles, and private correspondence – as well as on what his contemporaries wrote about him – this chapter will reflect on what we can learn from Teodoro Sampaio’s life about what it meant to be a free, lettered pardo man during the dismantling of Brazilian slavery.

This chapter seeks to illuminate the development of racialized subjectivities as an historical problem in nineteenth-century Brazil. It analyzes the letters and writings of the Afro-descendant engineer and abolitionist André Rebouças (1838–1898), with special attention to the role of racial silence in Rebouças’ personal diary and in the edited papers of his father, lawyer and statesman Antônio Pereira Rebouças (1798–1880). The self-narratives André Rebouças left to posterity are powerful testimony to the significance of transnational politics for universalist Black intellectuals in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. In exploring them, this chapter illuminates the racialized subjectivization engendered by the stigma of slavery and portrays the ways in which its politicization was shaped by a collective transnational experience.

Focusing on the life trajectory of Brazilian engineer Teodoro Sampaio, this chapter discusses the possibilities for social transformation available to men of color during and after Brazilian abolition. Sampaio lived through a time when the dismantling of slavery coincided with a racialization of social status, justified by the postulates of scientific racism. His trajectory thus illuminates how an educated son of a freed mother could make his way through a society that was reinventing socio-racial hierarchies even as slavery lost its legitimacy. This chapter aims to elucidate the intricate network of relationships and endeavors engendered by a pardo, born on a large slave property, who managed to become an engineer and manumit his three brothers, who were enslaved on the same plantation where Sampaio himself was raised free. Based on Sampaio’s autobiographical texts, books, articles, and private correspondence – as well as on what his contemporaries wrote about him – this chapter will reflect on what we can learn from Teodoro Sampaio’s life about what it meant to be a free, lettered pardo man during the dismantling of Brazilian slavery.

This chapter explores the history of Recife’s abolitionist newspaper O Homem and the bold racial politics of its founder, offering a fresh perspective on how the ferment of the abolition debates set in motion important shifts in racial subjectivities. Yet O Homem’s story calls attention to the important nineteenth-century history of racial silencing, which was an ideology and cultural process that shaped power relations. The paper’s founder, Felipe Neri Collaço, illuminated the racialized work that this ideology did in suppressing debates on hierarchy, politics, and, by extension, slavery. O Homem’s history also helps us better understand how the “breaking of this silence” sparked noticeable shifts in racial subjectivities, thus rewriting the racial narrative.