Community, Control and Acculturation: A Case Study of Slavery in Eighteenth Century Brazil

Abstract

Interest in the nature of Brazilian slavery has increased dramatically during the last ten years. In part this interest has been stimulated by the desire of North American social scientists to examine what was initially viewed to be the striking differences between patterns of race relations and slavery as they developed in the United States and Brazil. Among Brazilians the interest in slavery is older, beginning as an aspect of the larger evolution of cultural nationalism which sought to demonstrate the unique nature of the Brazilian solution to a multiracial society. Among both North American and Brazilian writers the initial tendency was to emphasize the more “humane” nature of slavery in Brazil. This was attributed to a number of factors of which the Portuguese concept of the slave as a human being based on cultural and religious traits was paramount. Increasingly this view has been subjected to intense criticism and recent works have focused on the harshness of Brazilian slavery and have sought to stress the similarities between the two systems.