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Journal article
"They Do Not Have Physiognomies of Their Own": Tracking Racialization of Maritime Professions in the Eighteenth-Century Portuguese Empire
Journal of social history, Vol.59(2), pp.215-237
Winter 2025
Web of Science ID: WOS:001411982900001
Abstract
During the second half of the long eighteenth century, various nations and empires began keeping records of sailors arriving and departing certain ports. In Portugal, all sailors were required to register at the Junta do Comércio (the board of trade), a measure enacted in the wake of a ban on the importation of enslaved people into the kingdom in 1761; an exemption was later made for enslaved sailors or crew members. This article draws on a data set of 344 sailors registered in logs of the Junta’s Lisbon office, dating from 1767, when the board was formed, to 1788, when it was absorbed into the royal court. Our analysis shows how the Junta’s logbooks became a contested space in which enslaved and free sailors of color attempted to define their own occupations, racial identities, and legal status in terms that frequently conflicted with the increasingly homogenized racialization of the state. We link the patterns of increased racialization of sailor records in Portugal to wider Atlantic developments in Brazil, France, Britain, and elsewhere to show how, during a period of immense political, economic, and social change in the long eighteenth century, racial categories were created, expanded, and disseminated across empires. The racialized vocabulary and mechanisms of anti-Blackness were developed, tested, and implemented via maritime networks during an age of capitalist and imperialist growth.
Details
- Title
- "They Do Not Have Physiognomies of Their Own"
- Publication Details
- Journal of social history, Vol.59(2), pp.215-237
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Number of pages
- 23
- Grant note
- Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas AM University British Academy
Transcription and translation of archival documents was aided by Texas A&M University undergraduate research assistants Aarya Newasakar, Jade Gooden, Hazel Jessup, and Mary Hess, and statistical analysis was aided by undergraduate researcher Advay Bhattacharya. Tania Casimiro, Joel Santos, Joao Sequeira, Yafr Andre Cuenu-Mosquera, and the Caribbean and Atlantic Studies Working Group at Texas A&M provided invaluable feedback on early drafts of the manuscript. Travel to Lisbon was funded by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University and by the British Academy. Two anonymous reviewers also provided constructive feedback for which we are grateful.
- Copyright
- © The Author(s) 2025.
- Identifiers
- WOS:001411982900001; 99381852697106600
- Academic Unit
- History and Philosophy; College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities
- Language
- English