Reis negros no Brasil escravista: Historia de coroacao de Rei Congo (review)

This valuable study places the question of the origin and endurance of black kings in Brazil in the context of the broader Atlantic world in order to unravel the meaning of their ubiquitous presence in Brazil and throughout the Americas. Mello e Souza posits that the coronation of Congo Kings in nineteenth-century Brazil tied black Catholics to a foundational and unifying myth of an African past while integrating them as a community. Thus, the development of Congo Kings is a fundamental piece in the process of identity formation in Brazil. To trace the formation of that identity, she first examines kingship in Europe, in Central Africa, and throughout the Americas and then turns to a discussion of black kings, Congo Kings, and the diasporan community of Africans and their descendents in Brazil. Although the book's broad scope prevents it from demonstrating its thesis convincingly, its impressive documentation will be of great use to scholars interested in examining the important, yet understudied, topic of black kings in the Americas.

The Atlantic-world approach argues that scholars must look at both sides of the Atlantic in order to understand the cultures, societies, and power structures of diasporan communities in the Americas. One of the main challenges of this approach is the complexity and sheer bulk of material that must be addressed in order to analyze these interchanges. There is a tendency to generalize African traditions— to expect them to be all BaKongo (from Wyatt MacGaffey's cosmogram of the BaKongo universe) or Yoruban (in the more traditional view that all African religion in the Americas had to be Yoruban). Some works, such as John K. Thornton's now foundational Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Michael Gomez's Exchanging Our Country Marks (University of North Carolina Press, 1998), have been successful in presenting the complexity of the African side of the equation. Mariza de Carvalho Soares's study of a lay religious brotherhood of West Africans in Rio de Janeiro, Devotos da cor: Identitade étnica, religiosidade e escravidão no Rio de Janeiro (Civilização Brasiliera, 2000),confronts the complexities of the approach with similar success.

Although Mello e Souza's work attempts to confront this challenge, it does not overcome the pitfalls of generalization inherent in the approach. For example, the book's exclusive reference to the customs and history of Central Africa implicitly negates any influence from West Africa on Brazilian coronation ceremonies, despite the presence of West Africans within many of the brotherhoods and maroon communities in the Americas. Mello e Souza talks about the history of Kongo and other Central African kingdoms, but does not spend much time discussing their worldviews and if and how they might have differed from the BaKongo. Examining so many different regions in Brazil over a relatively long time period exacerbates the problems of the African part of the book. She discusses, but cannot really unpack, the vast regional differences in ceremony and demography between Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Recife, and other regions. The broad scope of the book also compels Mello e Souza to rely extensively on secondary material. Although the author brings together a vast amount of information, the lack of coherence makes it difficult for the author to convincingly argue her thesis. The book might have accomplished more if it had tried to do less.

The fact that this study tries to do so much, however, is also its major strength. Its ambitious agenda represents a much needed first attempt to discuss the important presence of black kings in Brazil, or indeed anywhere in the Americas. The astounding amount of secondary material and published primary sources can serve as an important resource for scholars who wish to look...