Centro de Estudos Africanos da Universidade do Porto

Future research

This project has three sub-projects.

Sub-project 1:

The Atlantic Slave Market: commercial networks, prices and profits.
Main contents: The study object is the geographical area of South-Atlantic, namely the Brazil-Angola- East Africa connections. It seeks to identify and analyze: - agents of the business networks implemented between Rio de Janeiro/Luanda/Benguela/Mozambique - commercial circuits and formal procedures – from the ship’s joint ventures to the slave retail sell, including the inland African commercial circuits - price trends: main cycles of prices in local markets in Africa and Brazil - capital rotation times: length of voyages, differential time of investments in fixed and rotating capital -rate of profits; averages and main trends.

Sub-project 2:

The effects of the reinvestment of slave-dealing profits and capitals in 18th and 19th century Europe.
Main contents: The study object of this sub-project is the impact of Brazilian slave trade capital in the British and Portuguese financial systems. It seeks to identify and analyze the multiplier effects in industry, public works and financial institutions, mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries. It seeks to identify: - slave dealer families and partnerships: - banking and insurance corporations – establishment and stockholders evolution - gathering of literary and traditional sources of 19th century as regards the social image of the slave dealer (among the “brasileiro” tradition).

Sub-project 3:

African forced labour in colonial administrations.
Main contents: The study object is to identify West, Central and Southeast African forced labour in post abolition times. It seeks to describe forms of forced labour in African colonial societies mainly under Portuguese and French administrations (forced crops, tax collecting, forced contract labour, etc). It seeks to look up: - the compilations of labour colonial legislation of the main colonial powers - account reports of colonial corporations in agricultural, mining and industrial territories; -administrative sources relative to forced cultivations and tax collecting - neglected qualitative sources (press, literature, etc.) of colonial and post-colonial societies - organization of an oral archive with data collected in African societies.
Based on new data, this sub-project aims to: - analyse patterns of power and labour exploitation in colonial administrations - compare regional and historical trends among colonial labour politics - connect these historical forms with present day slavery practices in modern African and Afro-American societies.

Contactos / Contact
CEAUP
Via panorâmica, s/n
4150-564 Porto
Portugal

Tel./Fax: 22 607 71 41
Email : ceaup@letras.up.pt

AFRICAN FORCED LABOUR

Future research

Researchers