Manumission Papers, Bahia, 1831-1840

This dataset documents the manumissions of 5,133 enslaved African and Brazilian-born persons that were recorded in Livros de Notas (LNs) written in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, between 1831 and 1840; additional decades are forthcoming. The volumes are deposited in the public archives of the state of Bahia (Arquivo Púbico do Estado da Bahia, or APEB) in Salvador. The Livros de Notas were created by officials called tabeliães (notaries) who copied legal documents of different kinds into large bound volumes they maintained for the preservation and safe keeping of important records. When completed, our dataset of manumissions will be one of the largest and most comprehensive of any for Brazil, containing information about many thousands of men, women, and children freed in the province of Bahia between 1801 and 1850. Although the dataset was not conceived for the purpose, even the subset published here shows that it will be a rich source of aggregated as well as micro-historical data about manumission. The variables in the dataset permit analysis of the roles of gender; origin, nação, and color; and, to a lesser extent, age and occupation in manumission.

本数据集记录了5133名被奴役的非洲裔及巴西出生人士的奴隶解放（manumission）登记信息，这些信息收录于巴西巴伊亚州萨尔瓦多市1831至1840年间编纂的《记录簿》（Livros de Notas，缩写LNs）中；后续将补充更多年代的相关数据。该批记录簿现馆藏于萨尔瓦多市巴伊亚州公共档案馆（Arquivo Púbico do Estado da Bahia，缩写APEB）。《记录簿》由被称为tabeliães（公证员）的公职人员编纂，他们将各类法律文书誊抄至大型装订卷宗中，以妥善保存重要档案。待全部收录完成后，本奴隶解放数据集将成为巴西境内规模最大、覆盖最全面的同类数据集之一，涵盖1801至1850年间巴伊亚省数千名被解放的男性、女性及儿童的相关信息。尽管本数据集的初始编纂并非出于学术研究目的，但仅本次公开的子集数据即可证明，它将成为研究奴隶解放问题的聚合性与微观史数据的宝贵资源。本数据集包含的变量可用于分析性别、出身、族群（nação）与肤色在奴隶解放进程中的作用，同时也能在一定程度上探究年龄与职业的相关影响。