Le crime de réduction à l’esclavage d’une personne libre (Brésil, XIXe siècle)

This article discusses how the enslavement of free people was criminalized and tried in Brazil throughout the nineteenth century. Based on court cases in Rio Grande do Sul pertaining to the “reduction of free persons to slavery,” we analyzed, in a preliminary way, the application of article 179 of the criminal code. We draw attention to the profiles of the victims, the context in which the cases occurred, and the decisions made. The cases have been divided into three groups, according to the circumstances of enslavement : the first concerns Africans brought to Brazil illegally, after the Atlantic slave trade was banned, as well as their descendants ; the second comprises the freedmen, whose liberties had been revoked for different reasons ; and the third group is composed of free or freed blacks, who were kidnapped and sold as slaves