Abstract
This article explores the Brazilian episode in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). It argues that this episode not only plays a pivotal role in the novel’s plot, as it ends up in disaster and Crusoe’s shipwreck, but also has historical significance once it offers a glimpse of the transnational and transcontinental nature of the slave trade in the South Atlantic, involving Portugal, England and Brazil.
Highlights
In its 300 years, Robinson Crusoe has had a global reach in more ways than one: it has had countless editions, has been translated into numerous languages, has been adapted and imitated, and has made history by providing successors with a distinctive narrative paradigm
Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe can be brought under the aegis of the transnational due to its direct or indirect links with the South Atlantic world and the transnational nature of the interests involved in the one economic activity that made Africa into “the crossroads of the colonial trade routes” (HULME, 1992, p. 185)
What could be considered as passing references to slavery in a narrative that centres on Crusoe’s life on the island takes on a new meaning when read in the light of Daniel Defoe’s ideas on trade and the colonial system, and of the connections between metropole and colony in the age of mercantile capitalism
Summary
In its 300 years, Robinson Crusoe has had a global reach in more ways than one: it has had countless editions, has been translated into numerous languages, has been adapted and imitated, and has made history by providing successors with a distinctive narrative paradigm. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe can be brought under the aegis of the transnational due to its direct or indirect links with the South Atlantic world and the transnational nature of the interests involved in the one economic activity that made Africa into “the crossroads of the colonial trade routes”
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