Brazil and Africa
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 May 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 May 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0384
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 May 2023
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 May 2023
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0384
Introduction
This article is centered on the connections between Africa and Brazil during the era of the slave trade. Luso-Brazilian vessels transported as many as five million enslaved African men and women, which corresponds roughly to 40 percent of all captives shipped to the Americas. In Brazil, enslaved and freed Africans recreated ethnic, political, and cultural communities, but political and religious events in Africa continued to play an important role in shaping patterns of slave resistance. Throughout this period, a multiracial crew formed by traders of different ethnicities and legal status (enslaved, freed, and free) circulated across the Atlantic. Politically speaking, African and Luso-Brazilian authorities on both sides of the Atlantic engaged in diplomatic exchanges in order to guarantee the operation of the slave trade beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century. These diplomatic actions intensified in the first decades of the nineteenth century in the context of British measures to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. The bilateral approach expressed in some works listed in this bibliography challenges the Triangular model, very influential in English-speaking historiography, placing the connections between Brazil and Africa in the South Atlantic at the center. The article covers mostly the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, although a few (very important) works stress the formation of these links as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The discovery of mining regions intensified the trade in enslaved Africans to Brazil in the eighteenth century as well as the commercial activities on the African coast, particularly in places such as the Bight of Benin and Angola. In this period the active participation of African freedmen can be observed in the business of slaving, and their role increased in the nineteenth century with the high demand for African labor due to the expansion of sugar and coffee plantations. But numerous freedmen and freedwomen returned to Africa to escape political and religious persecution, especially after the 1835 Muslim uprising in Bahia. Many others established Atlantic communities in West Africa. Brazilian historiography is well represented in the list due to the growth of the Brazilian production regarding Brazil-Africa links since 2000. The Bahian-based research group Escravidão e Invenção da Liberdade has been one of the most prominent in examining the connections between Brazil and West Africa in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
General Overviews
Rodrigues 1965 is a good starting point for the understanding of Africa-Brazil links. Alencastro 2018 provides a South Atlantic–centered perspective of Angola-Brazil relations in the formation of the Portuguese colony. Verger 1976 is still the most influential work on the connections between Bahia and the Bight of Benin from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Castro 2001 stresses the influences of African languages on Brazilian Portuguese. The edited volumes Reis and Da Silva Jr. 2016 and Reginaldo and Ferreira 2021 add important contributions to the topic.
Alencastro, Luiz Felipe de. The Trade in the Living: The Formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic, Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018.
A masterpiece work on the links between Brazil and Angola in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The focus is on the South Atlantic as a unifying zone linking Angola and Brazil and allowing the exchange of ideas, peoples, and commodities. Alencastro advocates that early colonial Brazil cannot be understood without looking at West Central Africa. First published in Portuguese in 2000.
Castro, Yeda Pessoa de. Falares Africanos no Brasil: Um vocabulário Afro-Brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2001.
Study about the African linguistic grammar in Brazilian Portuguese today. The author focuses on the Bantu-speaking languages of the West Central Africa, although she also shows influences from the Yoruba (from Nigeria) and Gbe (from Benin).
Reginaldo, Lucilene, and Roquinaldo Ferreira, eds. África, margens e oceanos: Perspectivas de história social. Campinas, Brazil: Editora da Unicamp, 2021.
Collection of essays focusing on African connections in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Several articles address Brazil-Africa links.
Reis, João José, and Carlos da Silva Jr., eds. Atlântico de dor: Faces do tráfico de escravos. Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Fino Traço, 2016.
Collection of essays about the transatlantic slave trade celebrating the journal Afro-Ásia’s 50th anniversary. Many articles deal with the Brazilian connection with the trade in Africa and the making of commercial associations on the West African coast.
Rodrigues, José Honório. Brazil and Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965.
First published in Portuguese in 1961. The author was a pioneer in studying the relationship between Africa and Brazil in the long run. He argues that Brazilian society was profoundly Africanized due to the close contacts with the African continent and the flow of Africans from different ethnicities in Brazil. This is a classic that cannot be forgotten when one speaks of Africa-Brazil links.
Verger, Pierre. Trade Relations between the Bight of Benin and Bahia from the 17th to 19th Centuries. Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1976.
The most important study about the connections between Bahia and the Bight of Benin. First published in French in 1968 (Brazilian edition in 1987), it pioneered the bilateral studies in the Atlantic history field. The author compiled a great number of material sources in order to create a broad picture of the development of the transatlantic slave trade and of Atlantic communities on both sides of the Atlantic basin. The transcriptions made by Verger allow researchers to access primary documents.
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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
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- 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
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- 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
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- 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
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- 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
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- 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
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets