Decifrando as fugas escravas

The escape of slaves was inserted socially within the Atlantic slave cities, especially, in Rio de Janeiro city in the 19th century. Scan the meanings that an escape had for slaves, slave masters and others social segments, as understood by each of them are the guiding threads of this work. Through analysis of five thousand advertisements for runaway slaves, published between the years of 1840 and 1850 in the “Diario do Rio de Janeiro”, we seek to understand the ways in which slaves were socially inserted into the urban world of Atlantic slave cities during the experience of their captivity, as well as the motivations and strategies of these historical acts at a crucial moment in their lives, one that would ultimately allow them to break with their condition of enslavement. This article will discuss the analytical possibilities — for the universe of slavery in Brasil — of approaches about slavery, press and slave scales.