ABSTRACT
This article discusses the relations between micro-history and the current debate about global history in the field of labor studies. The analysis includes both a historiographical discussion and an in-depth reading of a single document: the post-mortem inventory of the possessions left behind by the liberated African (africano livre) named Augusto Mina, a seaman and a longshoreman who died in 1861 in the city of Desterro, on the Island of Santa Catarina. The article explores how the revelations of Augusto's life's archival record can illustrate both the potential and the limits of a historical investigation that tries to integrate both the theoretical and methodological contributions of micro-history and the intellectual challenges of global labor history.
Keywords:
global history; free Africans; slavery; bonded labor.