El impacto de la revolución de saint-domingue y los afrodescendientes libres de Brasil. Esclavitud, libertad, configuración social y perspectiva atlántica (1780-1825)

Abstract

In this article, I analyze the impact of the Saint-Domingue Revolution in Brazil. My main proposal is that the revolutionary message, especially the idea of political equality, affected the social group made up of free and freed men of African descent more so than it did slaves. I have used concepts essential to Norbert Elias's sociology (figurational sociology and the old, oligarchic-type society, as well as the democratic and representative type) and the general theory of slavery (slavery as a process and change in status, as well as the freedom-slavery continuum). Finally, I suggest that my conclusions with regard to Brazil can be generalized to the social figuration that encompassed the Atlantic world once the social position of free and freed men of African descent was marked by the recurrence, connection and structural regularities common to all American-slavery social figurations.