Freedom and civilization in the political thought of José de Alencar

Abstract

The debate on the emancipation of slaves in the late 1860 prompted an extensive academic output on the subject of slavery. One of the exponents of this debate was José de Alencar. Novelist and conservative politician, he positioned himself against the attempted emancipation of the unborn proposed by the Lei do Ventre Livre (Law of Free Womb), in 1871. Defending a spontaneous emancipation by a social revolution of the costumes, Alencar argued that slavery had a civilizing mission and that it would, in its proper time, civilize the slave through labor, enabling him to enjoy freedom as an independent and rational been. Freedom and civilization appear as key concepts of his theory, which cannot be fully understood without considering, firstly, the construction of a national identity by the Brazilian Romanticism of the 19th century, inasmuch as Alencar was inserted in it, and, secondly, Alencar’s broader theoretical framework contained in his work, O sistema representativo (The representative system), of 1868.