"They Do Not Have Physiognomies of Their Own": Tracking Racialization of Maritime Professions in the Eighteenth-Century Portuguese Empire.
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 im...
| Published in: | Journal of Social History Vol. 59; no. 2; pp. 215 - 238 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Winter2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=191051463&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 191051463 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00224529 JSH jtl: Journal of Social History issn: 00224529 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Winter2025 vid: 59 iid: 2 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 191051463 10.1093/jsh/shaf001 ppf: 215 ppct: 23 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.5MB tig: atl: "They Do Not Have Physiognomies of Their Own": Tracking Racialization of Maritime Professions in the Eighteenth-Century Portuguese Empire. aug: au: Crutcher, Megan Belton, Lloyd su: Racialization Free Black people Anti-Black racism Sailors Portuguese history Maritime history Slave trade prevention Eighteenth century sug: subj: Racialization Free Black people Anti-Black racism Sailors Portuguese history Maritime history Slave trade prevention Eighteenth century ab: 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. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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