Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- Contributors
- Series Editors' Introduction
- 1 Dependence, Servility, and Coerced Labor in Time and Space
- PART I SLAVERY IN AFRICA AND ASIA MINOR
- PART II SLAVERY IN ASIA
- PART III SLAVERY AMONG THE INDIGENOUS AMERICANS
- PART IV SLAVERY AND SERFDOM IN EASTERN EUROPE
- PART V SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS
- 13 Slavery in the Atlantic Islands and the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic World
- 14 Slavery and Politics in Colonial Portuguese America: The Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
- 15 Slavery in The British Caribbean
- 16 Slavery in the North American Mainland Colonies
- 17 Slavery in the French Caribbean, 1635–1804
- 18 Slavery and the Slave Trade of the Minor Atlantic Powers
- PART VI CULTURAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC PATTERNS IN THE AMERICAS
- PART VII LEGAL STRUCTURES, ECONOMICS, AND THE MOVEMENT OF COERCED PEOPLES IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD
- PART VIII SLAVERY AND RESISTANCE
- Index
- References
14 - Slavery and Politics in Colonial Portuguese America: The Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
from PART V - SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Maps, Figures, and Tables
- Contributors
- Series Editors' Introduction
- 1 Dependence, Servility, and Coerced Labor in Time and Space
- PART I SLAVERY IN AFRICA AND ASIA MINOR
- PART II SLAVERY IN ASIA
- PART III SLAVERY AMONG THE INDIGENOUS AMERICANS
- PART IV SLAVERY AND SERFDOM IN EASTERN EUROPE
- PART V SLAVERY IN THE AMERICAS
- 13 Slavery in the Atlantic Islands and the Early Modern Spanish Atlantic World
- 14 Slavery and Politics in Colonial Portuguese America: The Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
- 15 Slavery in The British Caribbean
- 16 Slavery in the North American Mainland Colonies
- 17 Slavery in the French Caribbean, 1635–1804
- 18 Slavery and the Slave Trade of the Minor Atlantic Powers
- PART VI CULTURAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC PATTERNS IN THE AMERICAS
- PART VII LEGAL STRUCTURES, ECONOMICS, AND THE MOVEMENT OF COERCED PEOPLES IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD
- PART VIII SLAVERY AND RESISTANCE
- Index
- References
Summary
In 1691, the regent of the Company of Jesus and the Ouvidor of Rio de Janeiro sent letters to Lisbon denouncing certain outrages suffered by the Company in Campos, a cane-growing region in southeastern Brazil. The general tone of the complaints can be seen in the following example:
The negroes of José de Barcelos and others of Martins Correia Vasques,…armed with arrows, javelins and firearms, went to one of the Fathers' corrals and opened fire upon the negroes working there…leaving many wounded…threatening to kill those who returned to that farm and, not yet satisfied, burning the houses and knocking down the corral.
The episode, which was not a rare occurrence in seventeenth-century Brazil, highlights a little-explored dimension of Brazilian slavery: the important role Indian and African slaves played in power disputes among the colonial elite – the self-named nobreza da terra, or “good families of the land” – and between these elites and the several factions of the imperial state.
Throughout the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, the Portuguese colonies of the Americas were the largest buyers of Africans in the Western Hemisphere. More than 45 percent of all slaves transported to the Western Hemisphere wound up in Brazil. It is now estimated that 30,000 arrived during the sixteenth century, 784,000 during the seventeenth, and 1,989,000 during the eighteenth century.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge World History of Slavery , pp. 350 - 377Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
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