Routes of freedom: the insurgent geographies and maritime labour in the post-Cabanagem Amazon (1840-c.1870)

Abstract

From the concept of “insurgent geographies”, I discuss how maritime work was shaped by people of different ethnic-racial backgrounds, during the reorganization of the worlds of labor in the Amazon, especially in the provinces of Pará and Amazonas, in the years after the end of Cabanagem (1835-1840). Workers of this period managed to reverse the places of subalternity to which they were destined, appropriating of the land, boats and water for the transit of people, ideas and aspirations of freedom. We will see how maritime work provided a dynamic of displacements that served to projects of autonomy of life, to crews that mixed indigenous, black and mixed races, regardless their legal status. The analysis concerns the years following the end of the rebellion, going up to the 1870’s, when waves of northeastern migrants altered the composition of river navigation. The sources are made up of reports by travelers from different origins, most of them from the North Atlantic, who report on the working relationships inside the ships. There, forced recruitment was combined with daily payments, in addition to the negotiation of seasonal teams composed of heterogeneity of subjects. Finally, it is concluded that the freedom routes experienced in the maritime world are not restricted to the coast of Brazil. Which leads us to observe such agencies within the territory, without neglecting the extent of these struggles in their aquatic scenarios.