The many meanings of manumission: dismantling the lexicon of Letters of Liberty in Nineteenth-Century Bahia, Brazil

The language of manumission is a window into the slaveowner soul not just the system of slavery. Congratulatory and contradictory slaveowners often captured and projected the emotional and legal consequences of manumission through duplicity of sentiment and duality of signification. The use of the verb gozar is a case in point. Meaning to both enjoy and possess it usually preceded the term liberdade. Elsewhere I have examined letters of liberty as emancipatory narratives, formal recordings of the outcome of processes behind which the parties involved had different stories to tell about their respective roles in either awarding or attaining liberdade (Collins, 2023). Here I append this approach with an examination of manumission using James C. Scott’s framework in Domination and the Arts of Resistance (2008 [1990]) and demonstrate how letters of liberty fulfil the criteria of public transcript through affirmation, concealment, euphemization, and stigmatization (2008, p. 45). In addition, evidence from letters of liberty from nineteenth-century Bahia illustrates critical demographic shifts in the transatlantic slave trade, the main modes of manumission, and reveals the linguistic entanglements characteristic of public transcripts.