Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil during the Era of Slavery (review)

Latin America generally, and Brazil in particular, are increasingly recognizing their African heritage. In contemporary affairs, a consensus is moving toward recognizing the social place of, and the discrimination against, Latin Americans of African ancestry. Similarly, the Lusophone countries in Africa are recognizing that decades of Portuguese domination in the twentieth century are more than counterbalanced by earlier centuries of close ties to Brazil. English-speaking countries, further, are becoming more aware of the significance—at present and in the past—of the Lusophone world, especially Brazil and Angola.

Here is a volume intended to summarize the state of the art of Afro-Brazilian studies. It conveniently conveys the range of links between the western coast of Africa and Brazil from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It focuses on the era of slavery, but interest in slavery surely arises from the growing recognition of the significance of the Lusophone world. José Curto and Paul Lovejoy, indefatigable Africanists with strong interests in the diaspora, brought the papers from a 2000 conference in Toronto to publication in a well-organized volume, which presents new research and reminders of the importance of earlier research on connections between Africa and Brazil. The editors' introduction introduces the three sections—four chapters each on the Luso-Brazilian slave trade, west Africans in Brazil, and the impact of Brazil on west Africa—and provides a bibliography of major studies on Afro-Brazilian connections. A glossary and a list of works cited in all the chapters conclude the book. The only problems I noted in the book's production were that two of the four maps were placed in the wrong chapters, and that the graphs were of poor quality.

The opening section, on the Luso-Brazilian slave trade, raises a set of significant but scattered issues. Alberto da Costa e Silva provides a stirring call for more research on ties of Brazil and Africa, and notes that scholars are now pursuing the pioneering work of Nina Rodrigues, completed in 1905 and published in 1936. Ivana Elbl skillfully details the Portuguese slave trade in Upper Guinea and Angola to the 1520s, and argues that Africans were eager suppliers of slaves, but her essay is not linked to Brazil (slave shipments to Brazil began later), and I am unconvinced that she has verified John Thornton's arguments that Africa generally was rife with slaves. Manolo Florentino opens an innovative extension of an old argument—the profitability of slavery and the slave trade—but now centering on merchants and planters in Rio de Janeiro and addressing questions of Brazilian economic growth. Joseph Miller adds reflections on the rethinking of African identity under way in the minds of many scholars.

Four chapters on Africans in Brazil have a consistent social-historical emphasis. Gregory Guy emphasizes the linguistic impact of Africans in Brazil, documenting the distinctions between Brazilian and European Portuguese, and arguing that African contributions explain the difference. He goes further to the extent of arguing that Brazilian Portuguese is a creole language: this assertion needs to be verified in discussion with linguists working on regions around the Atlantic. James Sweet draws on his research into Inquisition records to provide tales of seventeenth-century divination in Angola and Brazil. Linda Wimmer provides welcome analysis of family life on tobacco farms of eighteenth-century Bahia, showing long-term changes in sex ratios and family structure. Mary Karasch offers an interpretation of changing notions of ethnicity among African and Crioulo populations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The concluding four chapters, emphasizing the impact of Brazil in Africa, give the most coherent review of links between Brazil and Africa. Robin Law gives a definitive biography of Franciso Felix de Souza, the Brazilian-born settler in Dahomey who became its most successful merchant in the early nineteenth century, and traces transatlantic links throughout his life. Silke Strickrodt adds welcome detail on...