The Trade in the Living

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

Luiz Felipe de Alencastro

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781438469300, 9781438469294
• eBook ISBN: 9781438469317
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'America Latina e dei Caraibi

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Presentation of the English Edition
• Author’s Preface to the American Edition
• 1 The Apprenticeship of Colonization
• 2 Africans, “The Slaves from Guinea”
• 3 Lisbon, Slave-Trade Capital of the Western World
• 4 Amerindians, the “Slaves of the Land”
• 5 Evangelization in One Colony
• 6 The War over the Slave Markets
• Photo gallery
• 7 Brasílica Angola
• Conclusion: Brazil’s Singularity
• Appendix 1 Luís Mendes de Vasconcellos and His Offspring
• Appendix 2 The Supply of Northern Captaincies by Southern Captaincies during the Dutch War 1630–1654
• Appendix 3 The Salvador Correa de Sá e Benevides Family
• Appendix 4 Notes on Some Portuguese and Brasilico Expeditionaries of 1648 Task Force that Recaptured Angola
• Appendix 5 1600s Portuguese Atlantic Hand Firearms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover