From Africa to Brazil
Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830

This book traces the flows of enslaved Africans from the broad region of Africa called Upper Guinea to Amazonia, Brazil.

Walter Hawthorne (Author)

9780521764094, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 September 2010

288 pages, 10 b/w illus. 4 maps 12 tables
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.59 kg

'Hawthorne's data could take him much further than his core narrative of African re-creation, into describing the formation of a complex colonial culture in the periphery of the colonial world; a radically new culture, not just a survival or a hybrid. In fact, what I liked best about this book is that it provides a lot of information that does not exactly fit its proposed argument, but shows instead the excellent quality of the research.' Journal of Africa

From Africa to Brazil traces the flows of enslaved Africans from the broad region of Africa called Upper Guinea to Amazonia, Brazil. These two regions, though separated by an ocean, were made one by a slave route. Walter Hawthorne considers why planters in Amazonia wanted African slaves, why and how those sent to Amazonia were enslaved, and what their Middle Passage experience was like. The book is also concerned with how Africans in diaspora shaped labor regimes, determined the nature of their family lives, and crafted religious beliefs that were similar to those they had known before enslavement. It presents the only book-length examination of African slavery in Amazonia and identifies with precision the locations in Africa from where members of a large diaspora in the Americas hailed. From Africa to Brazil also proposes new directions for scholarship focused on how immigrant groups created new or recreated old cultures.

Introduction
Part I. The Why and How of Enslavement and Transportation: 1. From Indian to African slaves
2. Slave production
3. From Upper Guinea to Amazonia
Part II. Culture Change and Cultural Continuity: 4. Labor over 'brown' rice
5. Violence, sex and the family
6. Spiritual beliefs
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], History of the Americas [HBJK], African history [HBJH]