ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: SLAVE LEGACIES, AMBIVALENT ...

The ganho system was a world where slavery and freedom coexisted, in
which certain slave legacies endured as a response to numerous problems of
freedom, perpetuating patron-client dependency after slavery. The ganho system
in the latter half of the nineteenth century embodied the ambivalent structural and
experiential transition to free labor that affected slave, free/d, and immigrant
ganhadores. The precedent that organized slave and free street labor under one
system, however, was established in the first half of the nineteenth century. After
the drafting of the 1830 Criminal Code – a utilitarian application of the law that
legitimized slavery and subjected free people of color to private-patron and/or
public-State supervision – emerged the process to license enslaved ganhadores in
Rio. 6 It was not until after the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the
growth of the free black urban population that the municipal government started
processing licenses for free African ganhadores, most of them freed men and
women born in Africa, or libertos. 7 As laws gradually emancipated slaves after
1850, licensing procedures developed not only to include free ganhadores of
African origin or decent, but immigrant workers from Europe and rural areas in
Brazil who were entering the world of street commerce in Rio, and thus an urban
slave economy. It was these particular systemic adjustments, US historian
Richard Wade argues, that made it “possible for urban economies to maintain a
flexible colored labor force without disturbing, legally at least, the institution of
slavery.” 8
6 AGCRJ, 6-1-43, Escravos ao ganho e escravidão 1833-1841.
7 AGCRJ, 38-1-31, Africanos livres ao ganho 1855-1880.
8 Wade, Slavery in the Cities, 48.
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