Abstract

SILVA, Filipa Ribeiro da. Portuguese Slave Legislation and the First Wave of Uprisings by Enslaved Africans in the Iberian Atlantic World, 1400s-1500s. e-JPH [online]. 2022, vol.20, n.1, pp.24-39.  Epub June 30, 2022. ISSN 1645-6432.  https://doi.org/10.26300/ha9r-se93.

While Patisso and Carbone (2020) recently argued that slave laws in the Americas, including in Brazil, were inspired by Spanish legislation, this article demonstrates that Portugal issued legislation on slaves from as early as the fifteenth century and that this legislation was inspired by the country’s experience with enslaved people in Portugal, the Atlantic islands, and Atlantic Africa, and then transferred to the rest of the empire. The article also explains the key role that the first wave of enslaved uprisings in the Atlantic, starting in São Tomé in the 1510s, played in developing the Portuguese legal corpora on slaves.

Keywords : Slave trade; Slavery; Legislation; Portuguese empire; Early modern period.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in English     · English ( pdf )