The Trade in the Living: The Formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic, Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries

by Luiz Felipe de Alencastro

Macro-level study of the South Atlantic throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries demonstrating how Brazil’s emergence was built on the longest and most intense slave trade of the modern era.

The seventeenth-century missionary and diplomat Father Antônio Vieira once observed that Brazil was nourished, animated, sustained, served, and conserved by the “sad blood” of the “black and unfortunate souls” imported from Angola. In The Trade in the Living , Luiz Felipe de Alencastro demonstrates how the African slave trade was an essential element in the South Atlantic and in the ongoing cohesion of Portuguese America, while at the same time the concrete interests of Brazilian colonists, dependent on Angolan slaves, were often violently asserted in Africa, to ensure men and commodities continued to move back and forth across the Atlantic. In exposing this intricate and complementary relationship between two non-European continents, de Alencastro has fashioned a new and challenging examination of colonial Brazil, one that moves beyond its relationship with Portugal to discover a darker, hidden history.

Genres: History, Brazil, Nonfiction

642 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 2018

Reviews

[Luís Fellipe]

Maravilhoso! Leitura essencial e obrigatória para todo estudante de História. Alencastro escreveu um livro rico em fontes e para reflexão.

[Arthur Torquato]

981
A368t
2000

[Pedro Francisco]

“A história do mercado brasileiro, amanhado pela pilhagem e pelo comércio é longa, mas a história da nação brasileira, fundado na violência e no consentimento, é curta.”