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‘The Revolution of the Ganhadores’: Urban Labour, Ethnicity and the African Strike of 1857 in Bahia, Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 1997

JOÃO JOSÉ REIS
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil

Abstract

This article discusses the 1857 African porters' strike in Salvador, Brazil. Mobilisation for this unique movement was organised through work groups, based on ethnic affiliation, within which Africans developed a street culture with its own rules, rituals and symbols, all of which were essential to the creation of the group's identity and to pursue resistance in the urban slavery environment. The movement lasted for a week and it may have been the first of its nature in the history of urban Brazil.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
1997 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Translated from the Portuguese by H. Sabrina Gledhill. This article forms part of a more extensive study, carried out with the support of the CNPq and the Centro de Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, Rio de Janeiro. I would like to thank Judith Allen, who first called my attention to the strike of 1857; Richard Graham and two anonymous JLAS reviewers for their comments on a previous version of this article; and Sandra L. Graham, for her efforts to see this work published in English.