“He is trembling in his body due to diseases he has had”

Reflections on illnesses and health conditions in escape announcements in the slave Court (1830)

Abstract

In this article, we will present reflections on the illnesses that afflicted the bodies of enslaved people in the Court in 1830, a period marked by the significant arrival of Africans to the largest slave port in the Americas. Several national and international studies have explored different methodologies to understand the relationship between health and slavery. In line with the Social History of Slavery, this work seeks to contribute to these reflections by examining the health conditions of the captives mentioned in the escape announcements. To this end, we will use the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, a prominent periodical in the nineteenth-century court, as our source. Analyzing more than 200 headlines, we use the figure of the enslaved Fellipe, escaped in May 1830, as a guiding thread, since his announcement reveals nuances about the living and health conditions of the captives, evidenced in their bodies. Furthermore, we will adopt the critical fabulation methodology proposed by Saidiya Hartman, which allows us to expand historical readings and create sensitive narratives about experiences neglected in traditional records.