19. Quoted by Manuel Diegues Junior in O engenho de açúcar no Nordeste. Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Agricultura; Serviço de Informação Agrícola, 1952.
20. An old Portuguese arroba was equivalent to 32 pounds, or 14.5 kilograms.
21. See Engel Sluiter, ‘Os holandeses antes de 1621’, Revista do Instituto de Arqueológico, Histórico e Geográfico de Pernambuco, Recife, vol. 46 (1967), pp. 188–207.
22. Boris Fausto, História do Brasil, 4th edn. São Paulo: Edusp, 1996.
23. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, p. 159. For pirates, see Jean Marcel Carvalho França and Sheila Hue, Piratas no Brasil: As incríveis histórias dos ladrões dos mares que pilharam nosso litoral. São Paulo: Globo, 2014.
24. Andréia Daher, ‘A conversão dos Tupinambá entre a oralidade e a escrita nos relatos franceses dos séculos XVI e XVII’, Horizontes antropológicos, Porto Alegre, vol. 10, no. 22 (July/December 2004).
25. A reference to the Ile de Saint-Louis (Ilha de São Luís) in St Mark’s Bay (Baía de São Marcus) on the coast of northern Brazil, where the French founded a settlement in 1612. In 1615 it was conquered by the Portuguese and renamed São Luís, the capital of the captaincy (present-day state) of Maranhão.
26. Paul Louis Jacques Gaffarel, Histoire du Brésil français au seizième siècle. Paris: Maison Neuve, 1878.
27. The greatest specialist on Dutch Brazil is the diplomat and historian Evaldo Cabral de Mello. The text that follows is approximately based on information taken from his books O negócio do Brasil: Portugal, os países baixos e o Nordeste, 1641–1669 (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2003), Rubro veio: O imaginário da restauração pernambucana (Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 2005), and Nassau: Governador do Brasil holandês (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006).
28. Salvador was founded by Tomé de Souza (1503–1579), the first Governor-General of Brazil, in 1549. In 1763 the capital was transferred to Rio de Janeiro and in 1960 to Brasília.
29. Brazil’s coastline, adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, measures 7,491 kilometres.
30. The adopted name of Italian Jesuit Giovanni Antonio (André João Antonil) – born Italy 1649, died Bahia, 1716. His ‘Culture and Opulence of Brazil through its Drugs and Mines’, published in Lisbon in 1711, is considered one of the most important sources of information on the social and economic conditions in Brazil at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
31. Wolfgang Lenk, ‘Guerra e pacto colonial: Exército, fiscalidade e administração colonial da Bahia (1624–1654)’. Campinas: Unicamp, 2009. Thesis (PhD in Economic Development).
32. See Hugo Coelho Vieira, Nara Neves Pires Galvão and Leonardo Dantas Silva, Brasil holandês: História, memória, patrimônio compartilhado. São Paulo: Alameda, 2012.
33. Rômulo Luiz Xavier Nascimento, ‘”Entre os rios e o mar aberto’: Pernambuco, os portos e o Atlântico no Brasil holandês’. Also in Vieira, Galvão and Silva, Brasil holandês, p. 193.
34. The New Christians were Sephardim (Iberian Jews) who had, with some exceptions, been forced to convert to Roman Catholicism.
35. José Antonio Golsalves de Mello, Tempo dos flamengos: Influência da ocupação holandesa na vida e na cultura do Norte do Brasil. São Paulo: José Olympio, 1947, p. 61.
36. The residue (bagaço) after the juice has been extracted from the sugarcane.
37. A glossy-black, pheasant-like bird, formerly originally found in the forests of northeastern Brazil but now extinct in the wild.
38. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (ed.), A época colonial. São Paulo: Bertrand Brasil, 2003, p. 271. vol. 1: Do descobrimento à expansão territorial (Coleção História Geral da Civilização Brasileira).
39. Dom João IV (King John IV), King of Portugal from 1640 to 1656.
40. The Portuguese Cortes, or ‘Courts’ – from the Latin cohors – date back to the Middle Ages. They were political assemblies convoked by the king for consultation and deliberation, reaching the height of their power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
41. See Cabral de Mello, Rubro veio, 2005.
42. See Evaldo Cabral de Mello, O Brasil holandês (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2010), Rubro veio and Nassau; and Pedro Puntoni, Guerras do Brasil (1504–1604) (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1992). (Coleção Tudo é História)
43. Escravizados, according to the criteria adopted by Alberto da Costa e Silva, are Africans of the first generation. The term emphasizes the compulsory nature of enslavement and thus corresponds better to the notion that they were not in the situation voluntarily.
44. Inhabitants of the province of São Paulo. (The inhabitants of the city of São Paulo are called paulistanos.)
45. John Monteiro, Pedro Puntoni and Hal Langfur show the persistence of Indian slavery in Minas Gerais during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and thus one cannot speak of a transition from one system to the other.
46. Alberto da Costa e Silva. A enxada e a lança: A África antes dos Portugueses. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2010.
47. Cachaça, made from distilled sugarcane, is nowadays Brazil’s national drink.
48. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, p. 73.
49. The casa-grande, literally translated ‘big house’, and the engenho, which included the casa-grande, the senzala (slave quarters), the sugar mills and the surrounding plantations, were both emblematic of the power of the slave-owning sugar barons. The word senzala is equally emblematic of the forced submission of the slaves.
50. A tall grass, still used in Brazil for thatching rustic homes. The Tupi called it ssa’pé, ‘that which lights up’, due to the ease with which it catches fire.
51. Both quotes are taken from Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, p. 209.
52. The habit of wealthy households adopting outsiders and treating them as family members continued into the twentieth century. These people were referred to as agregados or agregadas.
53. Genipap is a reddish-brown fruit that yields a dark blue dye used as body paint by the Indians. The mangaba tree grows in the scrublands of Brazil’s northeast.
54. Gilberto Freyre, Açúcar: Uma sociologia do doce, com receitas de bolos e doces do Nordeste do Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1987.
55. Junior, O engenho de açúcar no Nordeste; Leila Mezan Algranti, ‘Os livros de devoção e a religiosa perfeita (normatização e práticas religiosas nos recolhimentos femininos do Brasil colonial)’, in Maria Beatriz Nizza da Silva (ed.), Cultura portuguesa na Terra de Santa Cruz (Lisboa: Estampa, 1995, pp. 109–24), and Leila Mezan Algranti, ‘Mulheres enclausuradas no Brasil colonial’, in Heloisa Buarque de Holanda and Maria Helena Rolim Capelato (eds.), Relações de gênero e diversidades culturais na América Latina (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo: Expressão Cultural/Edusp, 1999, pp. 147–62. Coleção América 500 Anos, 9).
56. By northern European standards Brazilians have a ‘sweet tooth’ – a tradition of preparing desserts with large amounts of sugar that originated in the sugarcane cycle.
57. For an analysis of the expression, see Ricardo Benzaquen, Guerra e paz: Casa-grande & Senzala e a obra de Gilberto Freyre nos anos 30 (São Paulo: Editora 34, 1994).
58. Kimbundu is the Bantu language spoken by the Ambundu in northwest Angola.
59. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, p. 125.
60. The boçais were new arrivals (considered ‘the ignorant ones’) and the ladinos were second generation or later (considered ‘the clever ones’).
61. Francisco Bethencourt, Racisms: From the Crusades to the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
62. Ibid., p. 173.
63. For a fundamental analysis of dependence and the policies of favour in Brazil, see Roberto Schwarz, Ao vencedor as batatas: Forma literária e processo social nos inícios do romance brasileiro (São Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1977 [5th edn. rev. São Paulo: Duas Cidades; Editora 34, 2000]).
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sp; 64. Sugar mills propelled by animal traction; in the former, oxen, in the latter, horses.
65. André João Antonil, Cultura e opulência do Brasil, 3rd edn. Belo Horizonte and São Paulo: Itatiaia/ Edusp, 1982.
66. Water that ‘stings’ or ‘burns’.
67. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, p. 146.
68. ‘Molasses white’, ‘dirty white’, ‘almost white’, ‘whitish’, ‘slightly mestizo’.
69. For the 1976 PNAD data (National Research per Sample of Domiciles) see, among others, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Nem preto nem branco, muito pelo contrário: Cor, raça e sociabilidade brasileira (São Paulo: Claro Enigma, 2013).
70. Fausto, História do Brasil, p. 48.
CHAPTER 3
1. Herbert S. Klein, O tráfico de escravos no Atlântico: Novas abordagens para as Américas. Ribeirão Preto: FUNPEC-Editora, 2006, pp. 6–7.
2. Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, ‘As populações africanas no Brasil’. Available at:
3. Ciro Flamarion Cardoso, A afro-América: A escravidão no novo mundo, 2nd edn. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1984. (Coleção Tudo é História)
4. At the Battle of Ambuila (or Mbwila) on 29 October 1665, Portuguese forces defeated the forces of the Kingdom of Congo and decapitated Dom Antonio I (also called Nvita a Nkanga). Hostility between the two countries, previously trading partners, had increased since the establishment of the Portuguese colony of Angola in 1575.
5. Klein, O tráfico de escravos no Atlântico, p. 18.
6. ‘Tomb ships’. Tumbeiro means ‘pallbearer’ – the person who carries the coffin to the tomb.
7. Herbert S. Klein, ‘Novas interpretações do tráfico de escravos do Atlântico’, Revista de História, São Paulo, vol. 120 (January/July 1989), pp. 3–25. Available at:
8. Ibid., p. 16.
9. Ibid., p. 12.
10. Wlamyra R. de Albuquerque and Walter Fraga Filho, Uma história do negro no Brasil. Salvador: Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais; Brasília: Fundação Cultural Palmares, 2006.
11. Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, O nascimento da cultura afro-americana: Uma perspectiva antropológica. Rio de Janeiro: Pallas; Centro de Estudos Afro-Brasileiros, 2003.
12. Klein, ‘Novas interpretações do tráfico de escravos do Atlântico’, pp. 16–17.
13. Santeria is a syncretic religion that developed mostly in the Spanish colonies. Today it is practised in Hispanic America and in the Caribbean, notably Cuba.
14. See, among others, Clarival do Prado Valladares and his article ‘A iconologia africana no Brasil’, in Revista Brasileira de Cultura (Rio de Janeiro, MEC, year 1, July/September 1999, pp. 37–48), and Reginaldo Prandi, Mitologia de orixás (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2004).
15. Charles R. Boxer, O império marítimo português: 1415–1825. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002, pp. 117–18.
16. The Colônia do Sacramento was founded by Portugal in 1680. Its possession of the colony was disputed by the Spanish, who settled on the opposite bank of the River Plate at Buenos Aires. Until the creation of the state of Uruguay in 1828 the colony was to alternate between Spanish and Portuguese control no fewer than six times.
17. He was named after Dom João II (John II), King of Portugal from 1477 to 1495.
18. The Costa da Mina, comprising the coastline of the present-day states of Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria.
19. David Eltis and David Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.
20. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, pp. 280–1.
21. Albuquerque and Fraga Filho, Uma história do negro no Brasil.
22. Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão, Diálogo das grandezas do Brasil (1618).
23. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, p. 288.
24. See Manolo Florentino and José Roberto Góes, A paz das senzalas: Famílias escravas e trafico atlântico, Rio de Janeiro, c.1790–c.1850 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1997), and Robert Slenes, Na senzala, uma flor: Esperanças e recordações na formação da família escrava (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1999).
25. Jorge Benci, Economia cristã dos senhores no governo dos escravos. Rome: Antonio de Rossi, 1705.
26. Amaral Ferlini, A civilização do açúcar.
27. Quilombos (explained later in this chapter) were settlements founded by escaped enslaved people that existed all over Brazil. The inhabitants were called Quilombolas.
28. Didier Fassin, La Force de l’ordre: Une anthropologie de la police des quartiers. Paris: Seuil, 2012. (Coleção La Couleur des Idées)
29. See Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society.
30. Lilia Moritz Schwarcz and Maria Helena P. T. Machado, ‘Um pouquinho de Brasil: Por que deveríamos nos reconhecer nas cenas de 12 anos de escravidão’, Folha de S. Paulo, São Paulo (February 2014). Caderno Ilustrada, Ilustríssima, p. C-2.
31. There is a vast bibliography on the subject. We suggest reading Stuart Schwartz, Reis and Slenes.
32. See Letícia Vidor de Sousa Reis, O mundo de pernas para o ar: A capoeira no Brasil, 3rd edn. (Curitiba: CRV, 2010), and Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares, A capoeira escrava e outras tradições rebeldes no Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850, 2nd edn. (Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 2004).
33. Pedro Paulo de Abreu Funari, ‘A arqueologia de Palmares; sua contribuição para o conhecimento da história da cultura afro-americana’, in João José Reis and Flávio dos Santos Gomes (eds.), Liberdade por um fio: História dos quilombos no Brasil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996.
34. See Kátia de Queirós Mattoso, Ser escravo no Brasil. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1982.
35. For quilombos as the ‘third margin’ of the slavery system, see João José Reis and Eduardo Silva, Negociação e conflito: A resistência negra no Brasil escravista. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1989.
36. For access to the land and its cultivation in the quilombos, see Flávio dos Santos Gomes and João José Reis, ‘Roceiros, camponeses e garimpeiros quilombolas na escravidão e na pós-emancipação’, and Heloisa Maria Murgel Starling, Henrique Estrada Rodrigues and Marcela Telles (eds.), Utopias agrárias. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2008.
37. ‘The armadillo’s burrow’.
38. Now a district of the city of Salvador, the capital of Bahia.
39. For the Buraco do Tatu, see Reis and Silva, Negociação e conflito.
40. The term campo negro, coined by Flávio Gomes, is used to analyse the complex network of social relations surrounding the quilombos. See Flávio dos Santos Gomes, Histórias de quilombolas: Mocambos e comunidades de senzalas no Rio de Janeiro, século XIX. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006.
41. The quilombos’ names are given in the text: Maravilha (‘Wonder’), Inferno (‘Hell’), Cipoteua (from the Tupi – a type of tropical creeper) and Caxangue (a region of Africa on the Costa da Mina).
42. For the quilombos of the Lower Amazon, see Eurípedes Funes, ‘Nasci nas matas, nunca tive senhor; história e memória dos mocambos do baixo Amazonas’, in Reis and dos Santos Gomes (eds.), Liberdade por um fio.
43. Babaçu – a tall pinnate-leaved palm.
44. A flowering vine that puts out a red berry with medicinal qualities.
45. In the colony most of the major cities were on the coast. The coastal plains were separated from the interior by mountains covered in forest – the Zona da Mata (‘coastal wooded zone’).
46. For Palmares, see Flávio Gomes (ed.), Mocambos de Palmares: História e fontes (séculos XVI–XIX) (Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras, 2010); Edison Carneiro, O quilombo de Palmares (São Paulo: Nacional, 1988); Décio Freitas, Palmares: A guerra dos escravos, 5th edn. rewritten, revised and expanded (l. Porto Alegre: Mercado A
berto, 1984).
47. The Royal Circle of the Monkey.
48. For the use of the term ‘república’, see ‘Relação das guerras feitas aos Palmares de Pernambuco no tempo do governador dom Pedro de Almeida (1675–1678)’, quoted in Gomes (ed.), Mocambos de Palmares, pp. 220 ff. See also Sebastião da Rocha Pita, História da América portuguesa (São Paulo and Belo Horizonte: Edusp/Itatiaia, 1976, vol. 8, p. 215). For the use of the term ‘república’ in Portuguese political culture, see Heloisa Maria Murgel Starling, ‘A liberdade era amável ou como ser republicano na América portuguesa (séculos XVII e XVIII)’. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2013. PhD (Brazilian history).
49. For data on the population, see Ronaldo Vainfas, Antônio Vieira: Jesuíta do rei. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2011, p. 270.
50. Antônio Frederico de Castro Alves (1847–1871) was an abolitionist poet who died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four. He was known as the ‘Slaves’ Poet’ for his ardent condemnation of slavery in such poems as Os Escravos (‘The Slaves’) and O Navio Negreiro (‘The Slave Ship’).
51. Castro Alves, ‘Saudação a Palmares’, in Obra completa. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar, 1960.
52. Slavery was abolished in Brazil on 13 May 1888.
53. For a compilation of the various versions of Palmares in the Brazilian popular imagination, see Jean Marcel Carvalho França and Ricardo Alexandre Ferreira, Três vezes Zumbi: A construção de um herói brasileiro. São Paulo: Três Estrelas, 2012.
54. The word capitão means ‘captain’, and mato (‘wood’, ‘brush’ or ‘forest’) referred to the country in opposition to the city.
55. For the capitão do mato, see Silvia Hunold Lara, ‘Do singular ao plural: Palmares, capitães do mato e o governo dos escravos’, in Reis and Dos Santos Gomes (eds.), Liberdade por um fio.
56. For the use of St Anthony for the repression of escaped slaves, see Luiz Mott, ‘Santo Antônio, o divino capitão do mato’, in Reis and Dos Santos Gomes (eds.), Liberdade por um fio.
57. For the ‘tomadia’, see Carlos Magno Guimarães, Uma negação da ordem escravista: Quilombos em Minas Gerais no século XVIII. São Paulo: Ícone, 1988.
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