Slave and Citizen in Black and Red: Reconsidering the Intersection of African and Indigenous Slavery in Postcolonial Brazil

Abstract

This article demonstrates the interrelatedness of indigenous and African-based slavery in nineteenth-century Brazil through the lens of postcolonial conquest. In frontier regions where labor was scarce, European immigrants and settlers vied for access to black and indigenous slaves and even trafficked Indians for profit in defiance of legal prohibitions, including abolition. The article critiques the exclusion of indigenous Brazilians from studies of nineteenth-century slavery and argues that the precariousness of freedom and citizenship shaped the lives of both African and indigenous Brazilians.