Transcription and analysis of an 1859 Justification Act

A Commercial Clash in São Paulo in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This article presents the results of research on an Auto de Justificação de Ausência produced in the 19th century in São Paulo. This study was conducted under the USP/TJSP cooperation agreement, where the document is located. The study adopted two perspectives: the first one, philological, with the reading and understanding of the writing, the systematization of the structure of the case as a documentary species, followed by a transcription of the document to make it accessible; the second, the historical approach analyzes the relevance of legal documentation as a record of the enslaved population prior to the implementation of the Matrícula Especial of 1871. Judicial proceedings are understood as historical sources preserving traces of commercial relations, judicial practices, and individual identifications linked to slavery in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the study analyzed aspects of documentary materiality, observing the ink drying process and thus broadening the document from multiple perspectives.