There has been a huge amount of work on the nature and structure of slave society in Brazil and on the history of European labour. However, the comparative study of labour in Brazil and Europe scarcely exists; and the relationship between slave and free labour across time has rarely been the object of study. This project seeks to bring about a discourse between the two areas, using existing expertise at the Universities of Nottingham (on European labour) and the Federal University of Minas Gerais, the Federal University of Niteroi and the State University of Campinas (on slavery) to provide the institutional backbone of the project.

Two workshops are planned to discuss the following themes:

• Relations between Masters/Employers and Slaves/Workers
• Owner/Employer Strategies of Control, Division and Integration:
• Slave/Employee Responses
• Strategies of Survival, Resistance and Accommodation in the different contexts:
• Slave-Slave/Worker-Worker Relationships:
• The State and Social Relations:

As a consequence of these investigations, our understanding of the operation of social relations in both societies should be enriched, similarities and differences highlighted and the specificity of each social formation more clearly delineated. The European/comparative dimension will also enable us to isolate the structural/universal and the particular post-slave/Brazilian determinants in the formation of the Brazilian working class. This should also enable us to identify the role of cultural interchange (Africa-Brazil, Europe-Brazil) at distinct stages in the formation of slave and then free labour identities.