"Appalling mortality": disembarkation, demographics, and African diseases.

Abstract

This article contributes to a better understanding of the conditions which Africans endured immediately after landing in Brazil, taking the study beyond what happened in the slave ships. It highlights the importance of Eastern Africans in the southeast of Brazil, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, something that must be considered in order to do a deeper analysis of identity reinventions, diseases, and healing practices. The background of the suffering of those people can be found in the debates and political negotiations surrounding the prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade and the independence of Brazil.