Liberated Africans and Slaves of the Nation Assigned to the Office of Public Works, Rio de Janeiro, 1860-1863

This dataset contains a list of 119 enslaved individuals working for the Office of Public Works (Inspecção Geral das Obras Públicas), which was part of the State Secretariat of Affairs in Agriculture, Commerce, and Public Works (Secretaria de Estado dos Negócios da Agricultura, Comércio e Obras Públicas) created by the Brazilian Empire in 1860. The dataset consolidates information collected by the Inspector of Public Works, Christiano Pereira de Azeredo Coutinho, and published in the annual ministry reports delivered to the General Assembly (Assembleia Geral) in the years of 1861, 1862, and 1863. The enslaved individuals mentioned in the dataset held the legal status of either Liberated Africans (Africanos Livres) or Slaves of Nation (Escravos da Nação), and their work assignments were distributed throughout the city of Rio de Janeiro. Among them are the enslaved workers assigned to the reforestation of the Tijuca and Paineiras Forests, a state-sponsored initiative responsible for recovering the tree canopy of former coffee plantations during the late nineteenth-century.