Digital Humanities: The Broken Paths of Freedom

Benjamin Mabeba, Jr.

Introduction to Humanities
HUMN 100
Paper 1: The Broken Path of Freedom
University of Maryland College University






Prof. Amy Newman
January 26, 2014
The Broken Paths of Freedom 1

Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 2
How the project got funded ............................................................................................................. 2
Historical background ..................................................................................................................... 3
The purpose the project: The context of the humanities in the 21st century .................................. 4
Search and visualization tools ......................................................................................................... 4
Designer and producer of the project .............................................................................................. 6
Personal interest .............................................................................................................................. 6
References ....................................................................................................................................... 7













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Abstract
Prompted by the growth of technologies that facilitate gathering, dissemination, storage,
and manipulation of historical data, digital humanities helps researchers using information
technology as a central part of its methodology, for creating and/or processing data. The broken
paths of freedom project actually uses various tools such as visualization and search and other
generic digital resources , enabling new ways of working, opening up new questions and creating
new knowledge, or answering existing questions more fully and systematically about the
movement of millions of Africans that were swept into Brazil in 19
th
century.
Introduction
"The Broken Paths of Freedom: Free Africans in Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Slave
Society" is a historical study of the geographies of enslavement, emancipation, and liberty
traversed by Free Africans [Portuguese: africanos livres; also known as emancipados and
"Liberated Africans"], a fascinating subgroup of the roughly three-quarter million enslaved
Africans illicitly trafficked to the Brazilian empire between 1821 and 1856.
How the project got funded
According to Stanford University, a 2012 National Endowment for the Humanities
Summer Stipend and in-kind cost-shares from the Center for Textual and Spatial Analysis
funded the start-up data standardization (Stanford University, 2012). The pilot visualization of
that data examines the three-dimensional history of the Africans rescued from the Cezar, a
Brazilian-flag slave ship seized off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in April 1838.
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Historical background
Almost three-quarter million Africans were sent into the Brazilian branch of the Middle
Passage in violation of international treaties that dated from the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and
following bilateral, national, colonial, and maritime anti-trafficking laws and codes. A subset of
these illegally-trafficked Africans were known as Free Africans [Portuguese: africanos livres;
also known as emancipados and "Liberated Africans"], after a legal status elaborated under the
various anti-trafficking treaties and laws. These Free Africans are the central heroes of The
Broken Paths of Freedom project (Stanford University, 2012).

In 1831, the government of Brazil created a law that banned the illegal trafficking and
acquisition of slaves. In the Brazilian context, the principal tribunals established to hear cases of
illegal trafficking were the Anglo-Portuguese Mixed Commission. Although the findings of the
tribunals were final, the trials were often protracted, as traffickers and their allies mounted
various maneuvers to delay or abort judgment. During the lengthy trials, rescued Africans
brought to Rio de Janeiro would be sectioned onboard the apprehended vessel, in landside
warehouses, or the House of Correction. The risk of death by disease or kidnapping was
unceasing.

Late in 1853, Brazilian law liberalized the path to "full freedom" for those Free Africans
who had served a fourteen-year apprenticeship to private concessionaires. Africans sought the
assistance of the British Legation in securing their second emancipation. By the early 1860s,
hundreds of petitions had been filed with Brazilian authorities. Full freedom autonomy over
labor and family relations, often subject to restrictions on place of residence, good conduct, and
stable employment was extended to all surviving Free Africans, regardless of the type and term
The Broken Paths of Freedom 4

of traineeship. The Yale law journal claims that the nineteenth-century slavery abolition
movement was the first successful international human rights campaign, and international
treaties and courts were its central features. The history of the antislavery courts also reveals a
more complex interrelationship between state power, moral, ideas, and domestic and
international legal institutions than many contemporary theories of international law and
relations acknowledge (Martinez, 2008)
The purpose the project: The context of the humanities in the 21st century
Sanford University claims that the project's combination of archival research and online
visualizations of the life trails of the Free Africans' individual and collective movements through
the spaces, experiences, and laws of Luso-Atlantic slavery, from illegal enslavement between the
1830s and the 1850s to the extension of "full freedom" to all Free Africans in Brazil by 1864-65,
brings the insights and methods of the "spatial turn" to the analysis and understanding of the
socio-demographic complexities of place in nineteenth-century slavery and emancipation
(Stanford University, 2012).
Sketching from minimal archives of approximately eleven thousand Liberated Africans
released from about seventy condemned slave vessels, the project puts space at the center of the
life histories of a select class of men, women, and children clandestinely spirited from West-,
West-Central, and Southeastern Africa after international treaty, colonial law, and national
legislation had circumscribed and then banned outright the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil.
Search and visualization tools
I stated earlier, the purpose of this project is to utilize search and visualization tools for
archival research. The project commences with a pilot visualization of the Africans rescued
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aboard the Cezar, a Brazilian-flag slaver intercepted by the British corvette Rover in April 1838
while sailing off the coast of southeastern Brazil. According to Stanford Web site, the pilot
project requires to test out various methods to reconstruct and to visualize the passages through
enslavement and freedom experienced by a regiment of named West Central Africans who
moved from the illegally enslaved in Portuguese Africa to Free Africans [africanos livres] in the
Brazilian empire. Below is one of the visualization tools that shows the Africans of the slave ship
Cezar.

FIG: The Africans of the slave ship Cezar and Brilhante, 1838-1865 (Stanford University, 2012)
The digital humanities also helps us to present several things related to historical data
such as
Processing data, particularly large bodies of data.
Connection between different type of data
Integrated and accessible collection of dispersed research materials
Support collaboration, networking and community building
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Designer and producer of the project
The Broken Paths of Freedom was designed and produced by Daryle Williams
(investigator) who was the Associate Professor of history at the University of Maryland. The
other contributors for this project were Veriene Melo (researcher), and Erik Steiner as director
and Lab staff.
Personal interest
When I was young, I was taught about the movement of African people from different
parts of African continent to various parts of the world. I was even told that my great-great
grandfather (used to be nicknamed Goliath) was taken away from his family and sent to either
North or South American continent. Since that time Ive been curious and more interested to
learn about slavery and the history of people of color in America continents. I believe through
digital humanities, people will be able to access collections of disseminated historical records
and research materials to extract the whole pictures of what happened to the Africans that were
swept in South America.





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References
Martinez, J. (2008). s and the Dawn of International Human Rights Law. The Yale Law Journal,
550.
Stanford University. (2012). The Spatial History Project: Stanford University. Retrieved from
Stanford University Web site: http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-
bin/site/project.php?id=1069