Slave Culture in Brazil, 1500s–1888

Abstract

During the past decades, historians have painstakingly drawn ever-richer portrayals of slave culture. Relatively high rates of manumission (by comparison to Anglo America) meant that small numbers of Africans and larger, but still modest, numbers of crioulos (creoles or the Brazilian-born)gained their freedom; freed Africans and freed and free Brazilians were central figures in many of the cultural institutions and practices discussed in this chapter. The massive Transatlantic Slave Trade Database reveals this forced migration's broad patterns and shows how it usually brought groups of people with broadly shared cultural backgrounds to the Americas. Slave families were also important cultural institutions. Well before Candomble's development, African healing practices had also extended far beyond populations of African descent. Just as they shaped work, family life, religion, healing, and other cultural practices, African heritages and Afro-Brazilian cultural practices also shaped resistance.