Karasch, Mary. The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil by Russell-Wood.pdf

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The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil by A. J. R. Russell-WoodReview by: Mary KaraschThe Americas, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Oct., 1983), pp. 279-281Published by: Academy of American Franciscan History

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B o o k Reviews

The Black Man in Slaveryand Freedom in

Colonial Brazil. By A. J. R. Russell-Wood. (New York: St. Martins Press, 1982. Pp. xiii, 295. Index. Notes.

Bibliography. $27.50.)

Titles for books are often chosen with a particularmarket in mind;in this case,that of college courses on comparative slavery or the African Diaspora. In spiteof its title, this is not a study of the black manper se in colonial Brazil;but ratheraseries of essays by a leading scholar on various aspects of Brazilian slavocratic

society, including Portuguese officials, Mineiro slaveowners, pardo freed-

persons,and free

peopleof color, as well as slaves. A

principalcontribution is the

author's integration of these disparate groups into a portrait-or at least a

preliminarysketch-of colonial Brazil.Thus, professors in search of new booksfor their advanced courses in Braziliancolonial history will find it useful to havesome of Russell-Wood's previously published essays conveniently available inbook form, while graduate students will appreciate his references to fascinatingdocuments he has garnered through careful research in Brazil and Portugal.Since the Black Man appears to be designed to summarize the author's recent

thinking on the nature of slaveryand race relations in colonial Brazil, I am surehe himself recognizes the gaps in his material but that his intent is to publish a

summary of his research to date in order to facilitate future studies. Indeed, I

expect the Black Man will shape some of our future ways of looking at Braziliancolonial society, for it raises important questions and providesa perspectivethatilluminates patterns poorly perceived in previous studies on colonial Brazil.

Although those unfamiliar with Brazilian history may find much that is newand insightful to them, scholars in the field of slaveryand the African Diasporawill be disappointed. The fault, however, lies not with the author but with the

extraordinary gaps in the scholarship on slavery and the African in colonialBrazil.

AlthoughNorth Americanscholars haveaccess to numerous

primaryand

secondary sources on slavery in the United States, Brazilianistssuch as Russell-Wood must do the initial spadework themselves in turningupdocumentation on

279







280 BOOKREVIEWS

slaves in colonial Brazil. Each new dissertation produced,for example, RaeJean

Dell Flory's excellent "Bahian Society in the Mid-Colonial Period," or James

Kiernan's ine statistical study on manumission in colonial Paraty, as well as each

new article or book by Stuart B. Schwartz or Katia M. de Queir6s Mattoso onBahia, challenges our previous view of slavery in a particularregionand/ or time

period. At this stage of research, a comprehensive, synthetic study of the Afro-

Brazilian in colonial Brazil is not yet possible.

Nonetheless, there are some problems in the book that professors should be

aware of when they use it with classes. First, Russell-Wood presumes a more

detailed knowledge of Brazilian colonial history than typical undergraduates n

comparative slavery and African Diaspora courses possess. Since his concern isto document the

complexityof the Brazilian racial and social strata in colonial

Braziland the differing roles of the free, freed, and enslaved gente de cor (peopleof color), he surveys so many different groups that they sometimes becomeconfused to the point that undergraduateswill be uncertainwhether the author is

discussing freedpersons (forros or libertos), free persons, or slaves; or blacks,

pardos (mulattos), cabras, or other racially mixed individuals. The use of

"coloured,"although a direct translation of gente de cor, has negative connota-tions to Black students in the United States, while the use of mulatto ratherthan

pardo is also problematic. At least in early nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro,

pardos used that term for self-identification and found mulato offensive.

A more serious problem is that the African component of the story is largelymissing. The author avoids either a survey of the slave trade or of ethnic originsto help explain the African contributions to the cultural formation of colonialBrazil. Although his intent is to define their "degreeof adaptation to the NewWorld and the extent to which blacks and mulattos could maintain an identity,and exercise self-determination and freedom of thought and action in a white-dominated slavocratic society" (p. 26), he does not identify the Africans or

explain how they adapted to colonial Brazil. By emphasizing the importation of

Mina slaves from West Africa to the mines of Minas Gerais, he leaves theimpression that Brazilian slave culture came to be dominated by West Africantraditions (this follows Gilberto Freyre and others); but much in colonial slave

society may only be explained by religious and cultural traditions from WestCentral Africa, i.e., Kongo/ Angola. Why, for example, did the slaves crown

Kings of Congo and rememberQueen Nzinga of seventeenth-century Angola ifthey came from the Mina coast? The sources of Africans and theircultureareyetto be studied for the colonial period, but they are fundamental for an

understanding of the Afro-Brazilian culture into which successive waves offorced or

voluntary immigrantswould assimilate.

Undergraduateswill also find it difficult to follow him throughvarious regionsand time periods. Unfortunately, he provides the beginning student with littlesense of change over time and/or place. There are only passing references to

plantation slaveryin the rest of Brazil or to cattle ranchingin the Northeast or the







BOOK REVIEWS 281

far South. By concentrating on mining slavery in Minas Gerais he leaves thestudent reader with a distorted image of Brazilian slavery. To correct this,

professors should plan to supplement this section with lectures and readings on

plantation slavery.

Another difficult research problem is that of the black family and kinshippatternsin colonial Brazil. Inan attempt to identify the issues, Russell-Wood hasdrawn on recent scholarship on the black family in the Americas, but his chaptersuggests that the same quality of data does not yet exist for colonial Brazil.

Students, however, will find this section helpful for the models and the questionsto be asked about the slave family in colonial Brazil.

His chapter on collective behaviour-the brotherhoods-is the strongest in

the book and should be required readingof all students of colonial Brazil,but hisemphasis on black andpardo Catholic brotherhoods needs to be balanced byan

equally detailed treatment of African religions. In part, his omission is due to thenature of the sources that detail the persecution of African religious leadersrather than ones that describe African resistance to official repression. On the

whole, his tendency is to perceive blacks as passive victims rather than as active

participants in the preservation of their culture, religion, and identity. In

particular,he downgrades the phenomenon of widespreadrevolt and quilombo(fugitive slave settlement) formation, except for Minas Gerais, and suggests that

they were "infinitelyrarer" han official correspondencewould indicate (p. 133).When Brazil was still covered with immense forests, cities were few, and soldierswere largely limited to garrisons, one would have to prove that slaves on isolated

plantations and mines did not rise up, kill their overseers, and escape to

quilombos in the interior as they did in the nineteenthcentury.Furthermore,themanner in which the map of Brazil is covered with placenames associated with

quilombos suggests theirextent and age in Brazil. The task for future scholars isto search for and locate the documents that establish the number of quilombosand slave revolts in the colonial period.

In brief, Russell-Wood identifies some of the principal researchtasks beforestudents of the Afro-Brazilian in colonial Brazil. It is ourhope that his collectionof essays will initiate new directions in scholarly research on Afro-Brazilian

history in the colonial period.

Oakland University MARY KARASCH

Demographic Collapse: Indian Peru, 1520-1620 By Noble David Cook.

Cambridge Latin American Studies, No. 41.(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversityPress, 1981. Pp. x, 308. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography.Index.

$37.50.)

The debate over the size of the Indian populations of the New World at thetime of initial European contact has in recent years moved increasingly from





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Karasch, Mary. The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil by Russell-Wood.pdf