Between laws, censuses and congresses: the debate on free work in Brazil in the second half of the XIX century

• Autor(a) principal: Brito, João Fernando Barreto de
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos de História (Belo Horizonte. Online)
• Texto Completo: http://periodicos.pucminas.br/index.php/cadernoshistoria/article/view/P.2237-8871.2017v18n29p429
• topic: Imperial State; Workers; North and South.; Estado Imperial; Trabalhadores; Norte e Sul.

The years between 1850-1878 are characterized by a particularly intense debate among parliamentarians in all the Imperial State regarding the directions that the major exporter plantations would take, the investments and the farmer’s maintenance of control over the free and captive workers. During this period, changes in labor relations were under way, guided by a new logic, which developed itself in a concomitant way to the collapsing process of the slave system and attempts to regulate the free labor, beginning with the promulgation of laws such as Eusébio de Queiroz law (1850), the Land Law (1850), the Free Venter Law (1871) and the Service Rental law (1879). In this context, the differences between South coffee growers farmers and the North sugar lords of the empire would start to polarize the discussions concerning improvements in the fields (as financing and use of new techniques) and control over free labor workforce.