From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830 (African Studies Book 113)

From Africa to Brazil examines the movement of enslaved Africans from Upper Guinea to Amazonia, Brazil between 1600 and 1830. Though separated by ocean, these regions were connected through slave trade routes. Walter Hawthorne investigates why planters in Amazonia sought African slaves, the processes by which Africans were enslaved and transported, and the conditions of their Middle Passage. The book also explores how enslaved Africans in diaspora influenced labor systems, shaped their family structures, and developed religious practices that drew from their pre-enslavement beliefs. It provides the first book-length study of African slavery in Amazonia and pinpoints specific African locations from which members of this diaspora originated. Hawthorne proposes new scholarly directions for understanding how immigrant groups established new cultures or revived existing ones in their new homes.