The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS179 that the traditional model of a paternalistic and tolerant slave society is more relevant to pre-nineteenth century Cuban history than it is to the era of the sugar boom. Before 1800, when slaves tended to work in the countryside on small farms, or in towns as personal servants, they generally fared much better than during the 1800-1865 period, a time of rapidly rising sugar production and the growth of large plantations. During the sugar boom, many estate owners sought the attractions of an urban environment and left their plantations in the charge of managers . Working conditions were particularly harsh where absentee ownership became common. Managers drove the slaves hard and quickly reolenished worn-out workers with Africans brought in from the active Atlantic slave trade. Nevertheless Knight also demonstrates that a more relaxed work routine and better relationships between masters and slaves existed concurrently with these harsh conditions, especially in the cities and on small farms in the mountainous eastern section of the island . Knight also questions the traditional view that Ibero-American slave societies lacked the virulent forms of racism found in North America. As in the case of treatment of slaves, Knight sees the harshness of racism as, to a considerable degree, a function of the sugar boom and the rise of large plantations. Some pro-slavery spokesmen employed racial stereotypes as an abbreviated approach to arguing that slaves were too barbarous and uncivilized to be granted freedom. Other important figures wanted to end slavery by replacing bondsmen with white immigrants , hoping to change the ethnic composition of Cuba's population. José Antonio Saco, one of Cuba's most eloquent abolitionists, became a leading proponent of the effort to Europeanize Cuba. In assessing the causes of abolition, Knight stresses a multiplicity of factors. He discusses the impaot of termination of the slave trade, the influence of emancipation in the United States, changes in philosophic attitudes about slavery, disruptions from Cuban revolutionary activity against Spain, and the technological developments which left slavery looking more and more like an economically anachronistic institution. Knight tends to weigh the economic factor most heavily and, at one point, says, "Slavery in Cuba was partly die victim of the steam engine ." The direct way these economic changes influenced abolition could be spelled out more specifically; also, the author could have established the rank—order of importance of the diverse factors he relates to abolition with greater clarity. Knight's study makes us aware that there are many reasons behind the demise of slavery in Cuba, but it remains difficult to pinpoint the central cause. Robert Brent Toplin Denison University The Abolition of Shvery in Brazil. By Robert Brent Toplin. (New York: Atheneum, 1972. Pp. 299. $10.00.) In this carefully researched monograph, Professor Toplin examines 180CIVIL WAR HISTORY with fresh insight the Brazilian abolitionist movement of the 1880s. As the necessary background for his study, he summarizes the causes and effects of the Queiroz Law, which terminated the slave trade with Africa in 1850, and the Rio-Branco Law, the so-called Law of the Free Womb passed in 1871. He provides considerable new material for a fuller understanding of the ideological positions of the planter-slaveowners and the urban abolitionists. The main body of the work details the campaign of the abolitionists which got underway with the formation of the Brazilian Anti-Slavery Society in 1880 and climaxed with the Golden Law of 1888 freeing the remaining slaves. To the growing body of literature on Brazilian slavery, this author makes two significant contributions. First, he posits and defends the thesis that "The demise of slavery in Brazil was sudden, not gradual" (p. 245). Contrary to the universally accepted idea of the slow decline of the institution, Professor Toplin proves that only after 1885 did figures for the total slave population plummet, a reflection of the effectiveness of the abolitionist campaign as well as of the social unrest it nurtured. Secondly, the author indicates that violence accompanied the extinction of slavery , a sharp contrast to the traditional view of the institution expiring peacefully. With the publication of this excellent book, knowledge of the abolitionist movement has reached the point where...