South Atlantic
- LAST REVIEWED: 08 June 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 June 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0138
- LAST REVIEWED: 08 June 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 29 June 2011
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0138
Introduction
The Atlantic south of the equator line was the most active economic hub in the early modern world, connecting Africa, the Americas, and the early colonizing European states, Portugal and Spain. Winds and ocean currents divide the Atlantic Ocean into two systems, north and south. The South Atlantic system follows the pattern of giant wheels turning counterclockwise, favoring sail from western African ports to the Americas. The South Atlantic was dominated by merchants trading with the only Portuguese colony in the New World, Brazil. And most of the people who crossed the Atlantic between 1500 and 1820 did so in the southern part. The transatlantic slave trade, the largest forced migration in history, affected the region profoundly, in part because most of the African slaves exported from Africa (over 5.6 million people, around 45 percent), left from a single region, West Central Africa. Over 44 percent of all African slaves who survived the Middle Passage landed in Brazilian ports, that is 5.5 million individuals. Yet, most of the debate on Atlantic history centers on the North Atlantic, heavily dominated by British merchants until the 19th century. The study of Atlantic history, although clearly moving away from political boundaries and characterized by flexibility and fluidity, is very much restricted due to language barriers. South Atlantic and the history of slave trade, slavery, and Native American populations have been excluded from classic Atlantic works, such as Jacques Godechot’s Histoire de l‘Atlantique and Michael Kraus’s The Atlantic Civilization: Eighteenth-Century Origins. Recently, historians have readdressed these problems and started to introduce Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean into the Atlantic debate. Scholars focusing on the Lusophone South Atlantic, the Atlantic nominally under Portuguese control, have shown the singularities of the connections in the southern part of the ocean. One of the characteristics of the South Atlantic system is the irrelevance of the idea of Triangular Trade that dominated north of the equator. Since the 1970s historians, such as Philip Curtin, Fernando Novais, Joseph Miller, John K. Thornton, Stuart Schwartz, A. J. R. Russell-Wood, and Mary Karasch, among others, have emphasized that in the South Atlantic, bilateral trade between commercial elites in the Americas and Africa prevailed, excluding the participation of the European partners. Although the Portuguese crown regulated and taxed trade, merchants based in Brazil dominated the Atlantic commerce.
General Overviews
Very few studies consider the South Atlantic world as a unity of analysis, but many works focus on the establishment and development of the Portuguese empire and the links between Brazil and Angola. Boxer 1952, Mauro 1997, Alencastro 2000, and Ratelband 2003 consider the Atlantic as a space for the circulation of individuals, goods, ideas, crops, and technology. Most of the scholarship on the South Atlantic is published in Portuguese (see, for example, Alencastro 2000 and Pantoja and Saraiva 1999), although this trend is starting to change. Scholars such as Russell-Wood (Russell-Wood 1992) and Novais (Novais 1981) have emphasized the autonomy of Brazil vis-à-vis the metropolis. In the past two decades, academics such as Heywood and Thornton (Heywood and Thornton 2007) placed a great deal of importance on the role of Africans and African societies in the formation of the Atlantic world. Benton 2000 compares the similarities of legal systems in the South Atlantic.
Alencastro, Luis Felipe. O Trato dos Viventes: Formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, Séculos XVI e XVII. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000.
One of the most influential recent books on the South Atlantic. The ocean is seen as a space unifying populations settled on its shores rather than separating them. Focuses on the formation of Brazil as part of the South Atlantic and intrinsically connected with Angola and the Spanish colonies. Stresses the economic relationships between merchant elites in Brazilian and African ports.
Benton, Lauren. “Legal Regime of the South Atlantic World, 1400–1750: Jurisdictional Complexity as Institutional Order.” Journal of World History 11.1 (2000): 27–56.
Important study that explores the similarities between Portuguese legislation and legal codes in Africa regarding crimes and enslavement.
Boxer, C. R. Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602–1682. London: Athlone, 1952.
A classic on the Portuguese Atlantic Empire. Through the life of the official Salvador de Sá, Boxer explores the competition between Portugal and Holland and the Angolan-Brazilian slave trade in the 17th century.
Heywood, Linda M., and John K. Thornton. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundations of the Americas, 1585–1660. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2007.
Recent addition to the scholarship on the Atlantic world that stresses the role of Africans as central agents in the 16th and 17th centuries. Discusses the establishing of slavery in the Americas, emphasizing the large presence of central Africans.
Mauro, Frédéric. Portugal, o Brasil e o Atlântico, 1570–1670. 2 vols. Lisbon: Estampa, 1997.
Originally published in French in 1983, places the study of Brazil in an Atlantic perspective, emphasizing historical connections and interactions. Explores the rise of the Portuguese empire and its intimate link with maritime expansion and its overseas colonies in its early phase.
Novais, Fernando. Portugal e Brasil na Crise do Antigo Sistema Colonial (1777–1808). São Paulo: Editora HUCITEC, 1981.
Classic study that emphasizes the importance of the Atlantic market for the formation of Brazil and its relative autonomy.
Pantoja, Selma, and José Flávio S. Saraiva, eds. Angola e Brasil nas Rotas do Atlântico Sul. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand, 1999.
One of the few studies that discuss the concept of South Atlantic and its centrality for the history of Brazil and Angola. A well-organized collection of essays that stress the links between societies around the Atlantic.
Ratelband, Klaas. Os Holandeses no Brasil e na Costa Africana: Angola, Kongo e São Tomé, 1600–1650. Lisbon: Vega, 2003.
Explores the role of the Dutch in the South Atlantic systems, including the island of São Tomé in the analysis. Argues that the Dutch presence in Brazil and African ports was part of the same process.
Russell-Wood, A. J. R. A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America, 1415–1808. Manchester, NH: Carcanet, 1992.
Influential study on the constant movement of people and commodities within the Portuguese empire. Places the Portuguese as the early agents in a globalized world.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
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- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
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- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
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- Barbary States
- Benguela
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- Brazil and Africa
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- British Atlantic Architectures
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- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
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- Captivity in North America
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- Castas
- Catholicism
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- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
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- Cherokee
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- Chocolate
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- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
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- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
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- Coffee
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- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
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- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
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- Cuba
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- Disease in the Atlantic World
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- Dreams and Dreaming
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- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
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- Ethnicity
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- Female Slave Owners
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- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
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- Food
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- France and Empire
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- Gardens
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- Germans in the Atlantic World
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- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
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- Honor
- Huguenots
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- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
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- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
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- Language, State, and Empire
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- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
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- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
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- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
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- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
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- Mercantilism
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- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
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- Minas Gerais
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- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
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- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
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- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
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- Northern New Spain
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- Oceanic History
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- Peru
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- Philadelphia
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- Red Atlantic
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- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
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- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
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- Seville
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- Shakers
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- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
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- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
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- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
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- São Paulo
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- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
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- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
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- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
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- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
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- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets