South Atlantic

Introduction

The Atlantic south of the equator line was the most active economic hub in the early modern world, connecting Africa, the Americas, and the early colonizing European states, Portugal and Spain. Winds and ocean currents divide the Atlantic Ocean into two systems, north and south. The South Atlantic system follows the pattern of giant wheels turning counterclockwise, favoring sail from western African ports to the Americas. The South Atlantic was dominated by merchants trading with the only Portuguese colony in the New World, Brazil. And most of the people who crossed the Atlantic between 1500 and 1820 did so in the southern part. The transatlantic slave trade, the largest forced migration in history, affected the region profoundly, in part because most of the African slaves exported from Africa (over 5.6 million people, around 45 percent), left from a single region, West Central Africa. Over 44 percent of all African slaves who survived the Middle Passage landed in Brazilian ports, that is 5.5 million individuals. Yet, most of the debate on Atlantic history centers on the North Atlantic, heavily dominated by British merchants until the 19th century. The study of Atlantic history, although clearly moving away from political boundaries and characterized by flexibility and fluidity, is very much restricted due to language barriers. South Atlantic and the history of slave trade, slavery, and Native American populations have been excluded from classic Atlantic works, such as Jacques Godechot’s Histoire de l‘Atlantique and Michael Kraus’s The Atlantic Civilization: Eighteenth-Century Origins. Recently, historians have readdressed these problems and started to introduce Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean into the Atlantic debate. Scholars focusing on the Lusophone South Atlantic, the Atlantic nominally under Portuguese control, have shown the singularities of the connections in the southern part of the ocean. One of the characteristics of the South Atlantic system is the irrelevance of the idea of Triangular Trade that dominated north of the equator. Since the 1970s historians, such as Philip Curtin, Fernando Novais, Joseph Miller, John K. Thornton, Stuart Schwartz, A. J. R. Russell-Wood, and Mary Karasch, among others, have emphasized that in the South Atlantic, bilateral trade between commercial elites in the Americas and Africa prevailed, excluding the participation of the European partners. Although the Portuguese crown regulated and taxed trade, merchants based in Brazil dominated the Atlantic commerce.

General Overviews

Very few studies consider the South Atlantic world as a unity of analysis, but many works focus on the establishment and development of the Portuguese empire and the links between Brazil and Angola. Boxer 1952, Mauro 1997, Alencastro 2000, and Ratelband 2003 consider the Atlantic as a space for the circulation of individuals, goods, ideas, crops, and technology. Most of the scholarship on the South Atlantic is published in Portuguese (see, for example, Alencastro 2000 and Pantoja and Saraiva 1999), although this trend is starting to change. Scholars such as Russell-Wood (Russell-Wood 1992) and Novais (Novais 1981) have emphasized the autonomy of Brazil vis-à-vis the metropolis. In the past two decades, academics such as Heywood and Thornton (Heywood and Thornton 2007) placed a great deal of importance on the role of Africans and African societies in the formation of the Atlantic world. Benton 2000 compares the similarities of legal systems in the South Atlantic.

Alencastro, Luis Felipe. O Trato dos Viventes: Formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, Séculos XVI e XVII. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2000.
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One of the most influential recent books on the South Atlantic. The ocean is seen as a space unifying populations settled on its shores rather than separating them. Focuses on the formation of Brazil as part of the South Atlantic and intrinsically connected with Angola and the Spanish colonies. Stresses the economic relationships between merchant elites in Brazilian and African ports.
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Benton, Lauren. “Legal Regime of the South Atlantic World, 1400–1750: Jurisdictional Complexity as Institutional Order.” Journal of World History 11.1 (2000): 27–56.
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Important study that explores the similarities between Portuguese legislation and legal codes in Africa regarding crimes and enslavement.
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Boxer, C. R. Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602–1682. London: Athlone, 1952.
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A classic on the Portuguese Atlantic Empire. Through the life of the official Salvador de Sá, Boxer explores the competition between Portugal and Holland and the Angolan-Brazilian slave trade in the 17th century.
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Heywood, Linda M., and John K. Thornton. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundations of the Americas, 1585–1660. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2007.
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Recent addition to the scholarship on the Atlantic world that stresses the role of Africans as central agents in the 16th and 17th centuries. Discusses the establishing of slavery in the Americas, emphasizing the large presence of central Africans.
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Mauro, Frédéric. Portugal, o Brasil e o Atlântico, 1570–1670. 2 vols. Lisbon: Estampa, 1997.
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Originally published in French in 1983, places the study of Brazil in an Atlantic perspective, emphasizing historical connections and interactions. Explores the rise of the Portuguese empire and its intimate link with maritime expansion and its overseas colonies in its early phase.
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Novais, Fernando. Portugal e Brasil na Crise do Antigo Sistema Colonial (1777–1808). São Paulo: Editora HUCITEC, 1981.
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Classic study that emphasizes the importance of the Atlantic market for the formation of Brazil and its relative autonomy.
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Pantoja, Selma, and José Flávio S. Saraiva, eds. Angola e Brasil nas Rotas do Atlântico Sul. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand, 1999.
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One of the few studies that discuss the concept of South Atlantic and its centrality for the history of Brazil and Angola. A well-organized collection of essays that stress the links between societies around the Atlantic.
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Ratelband, Klaas. Os Holandeses no Brasil e na Costa Africana: Angola, Kongo e São Tomé, 1600–1650. Lisbon: Vega, 2003.
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Explores the role of the Dutch in the South Atlantic systems, including the island of São Tomé in the analysis. Argues that the Dutch presence in Brazil and African ports was part of the same process.
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Russell-Wood, A. J. R. A World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America, 1415–1808. Manchester, NH: Carcanet, 1992.
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Influential study on the constant movement of people and commodities within the Portuguese empire. Places the Portuguese as the early agents in a globalized world.
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Reference Works

Few reference works focus on the South Atlantic, although several encyclopedias explore the transatlantic slave trade, mainly with a North Atlantic focus. The websites of the Biblioteca Nacional Digital, Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas, and Colonial Voyage make available primary sources, maps, drawings, bibliographies and other useful information for specialized and nonspecialized readers. Serrão and Marques 1986–1998, Walvin 2006, and Egerton, et al. 2007 provide a good introduction. Useful maps and chronologies make these important reference works. Miller 1999, Peabody and Grinberg 2007, and the website of the E-cyclopaedia of Portuguese Expansion offer good bibliographies.

Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record.
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Website that contains approximately 1,235 images regarding the capture, trade, and transportation of slaves in the African continent as well as their life experiences in the Americas. An important number of its collections deal with the slave trade in the South Atlantic.
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Biblioteca Nacional Digital.
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This website is available only in Portuguese but it is worth surfing to catch a glimpse at precious iconographic and cartographic materials. Of special interest are the drawings of flora, fauna, and indigenous peoples from Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira’s scientific expedition (1783–1792); the maps in the historical cartography link, many on the Atlantic; and the images (including photographs) in the slave trade section. NB: the site requires plug-ins to show the images.
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Colonial Voyage.
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On the web since 1998 and constantly updated, includes useful information, photographs, and bibliography on Portuguese and Dutch colonial forts and settlements in America, Africa, and Asia.
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E-cyclopaedia of Portuguese Expansion.
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Created by the Centro de História de Além-Mar (Center for Overseas History) at the New University of Lisbon, this site includes brief informative articles by specialists, chronologies, lists of colonial administrators, maps, illustrations, and other useful information on the history of Portuguese overseas expansion. Part of the site is available in English, with plans for translation of all the material.
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Egerton, Douglas, Alison Games, Jane Landers, Kris Lane, and Donald Wright. The Atlantic World: A History, 1400–1888. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2007.
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Takes the Atlantic as a unit and places Amerindians and Africans as central historical agents. Provides good maps and bibliographies.
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Miller, Joseph C., ed. Slavery and Slaving in World History: A Bibliography. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999.
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This important work lists published and unpublished studies on slavery, organized by geographic area of study, period, and theme. Published originally in 1999, Slavery and Abolition continues to print annual bibliographies.
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Peabody, Sue, and Keila Grinberg, eds. Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007.
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Short volume on the legal debate over freedom and slavery in the North and South Atlantic. Includes transcription and translation of important legal codes on the French Caribbean, Spain and its colonies, and Portugal and Brazil.
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Serrão, Joel, and A. H. de Oliveira Marques, eds. Nova História da Expansão Portuguesa. Lisbon: Estampa, 1986–1998.
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Twelve-volume collection on the expansion of the Portuguese maritime empire. Several volumes, especially those dealing with Brazil, the Luso-Atlantic Empire, and the African colonies are devoted to events in the South Atlantic.
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Walvin, James. Atlas of Slavery. Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2006.
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Focuses on the rise and operation of the Atlantic slave trade, accompanied by eighty-seven maps illustrating its development in Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
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Journals

No scholarly journal focuses solely on the South Atlantic, although several journals publish many articles devoted to the region. Atlantic Studies and Itinerario focus on the Atlantic as a geography zone, publishing articles that emphasize a comparative approach. Colonial Latin American Review, Áfro-Asia, Hispanic American HistoricalReview, and the Luso-Brazilian Review tend to publish studies on New World societies, mostly in the colonial period. Slavery and Abolition and Portuguese Studies Review feature important articles on the South Atlantic.

Afro-Ásia.
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Peer-reviewed journal published by the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais of the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Salvador, Brazil). Publishes articles in Portuguese on issues related to Africans and their descendants in Brazil and elsewhere. Most of the articles deal with the South Atlantic.
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Atlantic Studies.
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Based in Leiden, The Netherlands, is the official journal of MESEA, the Society for the Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas. An interdisciplinary journal, publishes articles mostly on the modern Atlantic world.
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Colonial Latin American Review.
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Interdisciplinary journal published by Taylor & Francis. Articles published range from history, anthropology, art, to literature and other disciplines. Some of them engage specifically in the debate on the South Atlantic world.
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Hispanic American Historical Review.
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Published by Duke University Press, includes articles and book reviews on Latin America, although few focus on the South Atlantic.
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Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction.
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The journal of the Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction (FEEGI). Published at Leiden University, in the Netherlands. Includes articles on the South Atlantic, Portuguese expansion, slavery, and the slave trade.
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Luso-Brazilian Review.
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Published twice per year by the University of Wisconsin Press, this scholarly journal gives emphasis on studies in history, literature, and social science of Portuguese, Brazilian, and Lusophone African cultures.
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Portuguese Studies Review.
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Academic journal that focus on regions affected by Luso-Brazilian exploration, extending to colonization, migration, and trade exchanges, among other topics.
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Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies.
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Published quarterly by Taylor and Francis. Essays on the North Atlantic systems predominate although some articles deal with the regions south of the equator.
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Primary Sources

Primary sources on the Portuguese expansion in the Atlantic Ocean are abundant, although few are available in English. Collections such as Albuquerque, et al. 1993–2002; Cordeiro 1881; and Brásio 1952–1991 include narratives of explorers and missionaries, as well as letters from colonial administrators. Most historical documents on the slave trade available in English deal with the North Atlantic. Yet, several published 19th-century studies on the Portuguese Atlantic emphasize commercial links between Angola and Brazil. The accounts of Pereira 1937 and Zurara 1896–1899 are available in English. Law and Lovejoy 2007, an edition of Baquaqua, offers a primary account from the perspective of an African man. Besides Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record (cited under Reference Works) the online databases Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database and the Ecclesiastical Sources for Slave Societies offer access to important collections. Worger, et al. 2010 provides a good selection of primary sources about Africa.

Albuquerque, Luís de, Maria Emília Madeira Santos, and Maria Luísa Esteves, eds. Portugaliae Monumenta Africana. 5 vols. Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1993–2002.
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Transcription of manuscript documents from Iberian archives on the relations between Europeans and Africans, covering mainly the 15th and early 16th century. The documents are mostly in Portuguese and Latin, with summaries in English and French. For specialists, although lacking indexes and explanatory notes. Volume 4 had not yet been published as of 2010.
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Brásio, António Duarte, ed. Monumenta Missionaria Africana. 22 vols. Lisbon, Portugal: Agência Geral do Ultramar, Divisão de Publicações e Biblioteca, 1952–1991.
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A collection of twenty-two volumes of primary sources from the 14th to the 19th century documenting Portuguese exploration in Africa. Contains documents in Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and Latin, including official letters from colonial and African authorities.
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Cordeiro, Luciano. Memorias do Ultramar. Viagens Explorações e Conquistas dos Portuguezes. Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1881.
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Six-volume collection of primary source documents relating to the Portuguese expansion from the early 16th century to the mid-18th century. Most of the sources are devoted to the South Atlantic world.
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Ecclesiastical Sources for Slave Societies.
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Digital collection collected by a team led by historian Jane Landers, from Vanderbilt University. Contains parish records from Cuba, Brazil, and Colombia. Original documents are available online for consultation.
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Law, Robin, and Paul Lovejoy, eds. The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua. His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2007.
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Revised and commented edition of the biography of the African Baquaqua, who traveled around the South Atlantic. Offers the perspective of an enslaved African from Central Sudan, shipped out of Ouidah to Brazil. After living in different coastal towns in Brazil, he went to New York City, where he regained his freedom. Baquaqua also traveled to Haiti before settling down in Chatham, Canada West (Ontario).
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Pereira, Duarte Pacheco. Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis. London: Hakluyt Society, 1937.
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Originally written in Portuguese in the 16th century, contains five parts including nautical, geographic, and economic information accumulated by the Portuguese in the 14th and 15th centuries. Describes the lands of what constitutes Brazil nowadays and West and West Central Africa, and several islands, including St. Helena.
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Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
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An online database comprising more than thirty-four thousand transatlantic slave trade voyages between 1514 and 1866. An important tool to explore the volume, origins, and directions of the forced migrations of African slaves.
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Worger, William, Nancy L. Clark, and Edward Alpers. Africa and the West: A Documentary History. Vol. 1, From the Slave Trade to Conquest, 1441–1905. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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Selection of short-accounts, most originally published in Portuguese, Spanish, or French and translated into English, relating to the early contacts between Europeans and Africans.
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Zurara, Gomes E. The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. London, Hakluyt Society, 1896–1899.
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Originally written in Portuguese, the account describes the early exploratory voyages off the coast of West Africa. A valuable source to understand the formation of the Atlantic world in the early modern period when Portuguese and Spanish led the Atlantic economy.
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Comparative South Atlantic

Since the early 1960s historians have been discussing the South Atlantic world and rethinking the articulations between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The pioneering study Curtin 1990 explores the commercial links connecting shores in the Atlantic, focusing on the circulation of goods, ideas, and people. The Atlantic historiography has expanded since the late 20th century in the Anglophone academy with the publication of Schwartz 2004 and Adelman 2006. A milestone in the quest for an Atlantic history examining the Atlantic as a whole, Bailyn 2005 neglects the South Atlantic and the African coast. In recent years, several studies have dealt with the Atlantic; most of them look at a particular place within an Atlantic approach, and very few deal with the Atlantic as a whole. In most cases, African societies are simply providers of labor. The studies Sweet 2003, Heywood and Thornton 2007, and Landers 2010 place Africans in the center of their analysis.

Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
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Analyzes the dissolution of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in conjunction, focusing on the River Plate, Gran Colombia, and Brazil. Explores the role of the commercial elites in the colonies and their links to the transatlantic slave trade.
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Bailyn, Bernard. Atlantic History: Concept and Contours. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
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One of the leading books, in English, that proposes an Atlantic history that encompasses the whole ocean basin. Yet, this study mainly focuses on British North America, neglecting the South Atlantic.
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Curtin, Philip. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex: Essays in Atlantic History. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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Another classic study that shifted the paradigm of Atlantic history by including Africa and Africans in its analysis.
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Heywood, Linda, and John Thornton. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Influential study that traces the role of West Central Africans in the English and Dutch colonies in mainland North America, without exploring the South Atlantic connections to Brazil and Spanish America. The book explores the role of warfare and African elites in the transatlantic slave trade.
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Landers, Jane. Atlantic Creoles in the Age of Revolutions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
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Presenting several key studies, this volume explores the participation of Africans in militias in Havana, Cuba, and in uprisings, such as the Saint Domingue revolts. Focusing mainly on the Caribbean in the 18th and 19th century, Landers stresses the role of Africans in the formation of New World societies.
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Schwartz, Stuart, ed. Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
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This collection of studies shows the importance of Portuguese capital and connections to the expansion of sugar production before 1650. Most studies stress the importance and role played by African slaves in different New World societies.
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Sweet, James H. Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African Portuguese World, 1441–1770. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
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One of the first studies, written in English, to focus on the South Atlantic. The important study links African influence to cultural expression in colonial Brazil. Sweet explores how religious beliefs and rituals allowed Central African slaves to resist slavery in Brazil and maintain strong links with their homelands.
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Transatlantic Slave Trade

Most of the work on the South Atlantic has been done by scholars focused on the transatlantic slave trade or the African presence in South America. The pioneering work Curtin 1969 inaugurated the scholarship on the demographic analysis of the slave trade and transatlantic connections. While several scholars focused on the “numbers game,” as the quantitative approach to the forced migration of Africans became known, others explored cultural contributions. The works Klein 1999, Postma 1990, and Florentino 1997 do both. Miller 1988 and Curto and Lovejoy 2004 emphasize the connections across the Atlantic and the effects of the transatlantic slave trade for Africans. Newson and Minchin 2007 brings areas that have remained neglected, such as much of Spanish South America, into the debate.

Curtin, Philip. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.
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Pioneer study that initiated the efforts to quantify the transatlantic slave trade and understand its effects on the African continent. Still important, although most of the numbers and estimates have been revised by the team working on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (cited under Primary Sources).
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Curto, José C., and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds. Enslaving Connections. Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil during the Era of Slavery. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004.
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Volume containing important studies by Latin Americanists and Africanists on the South Atlantic links. The editors explore the differences between the North and the South Atlantic and stress the importance of Brazil as the largest destination for African slaves.
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Florentino, Manolo. Em Costas Negras. Uma Historia do Trafico de escravos entre a Africa e o Rio de Janeiro, Séculos XVIII e XIX. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997.
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Heavily based on quantitative data, this study shows the importance of Brazil-based merchants in the slave trade in West Central Africa. Explores the importance of the constant arrival of Africans to the reproduction of the slave population and society in Brazil.
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Klein, Herbert. The Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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Analyzes the importance of the slave trade in the South Atlantic.
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Miller, Joseph C. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
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Massive study that places Angola in the Atlantic world, exploring the establishment of slaving business along the coast of West Central Africa. Innovative and still important study in its link between Angola and Brazil.
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Newson, Linda A., and Susie Minchin. From Capture to Sale. The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007.
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Important study that discusses the early slave trade to Spanish Americas, emphasizing its link to West Central Africa. A significant contribution to a scholarship dominated by studies on the slave trade in the 18th and 19th century.
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Postma, Johannes M. The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1815. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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Important study on the role of Dutch traders in the slave trade in West Central Africa, Brazil, and the Caribbean.
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Bilateral Versus Triangular Trade

One of the major contributions of scholars focusing on the South Atlantic has been the debate concerning the classic model of Triangular Trade. While the Europe-Africa-the Americas model exchange prevailed in the North Atlantic, Boxer 1991, Verger 1976, Carreira 1983, and Curto 2001, among others, have shown that the goods used to acquire slaves on the coast of Africa were mainly produced or imported from Brazil, such as tobacco, alcohol, and even horses and textiles, as Ferreira 2007 demonstrates. Herlin 2004 and Schwartz 2008 show that in the South Atlantic bilateral trade connections dominated, excluding the Iberian empires from the scene.

Boxer, Charles R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1414–1825. Manchester, UK: Carcanet, 1991.
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Published originally in 1969, this is a classic, valuable, and important study. Explores Portuguese expansion into Africa, the Americas, and Asia and has influenced the historiography for the past four decades. Emphasizes the role of the overseas territories in the consolidation of the Portuguese state.
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Carreira, António. As Companhias Pombalinas de Grão Pará e Maranhão e Pernambuco e Paraíba. Lisbon: Presença, 1983.
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Focuses on the commercial companies and monopolies created by the Portuguese government at the end of the 18th century to regulate trade, including the slave commerce, between its colonies.
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Curto, José C. “Luso-Brazilian Alcohol and the Legal Slave Trade at Benguela and its Hinterland, c. 1617–1830.” In Négoce Blanc en Afrique Noire: L‘évolution du commerce à longue distance en Afrique noire du 18e au 20e siècles. Edited by H. Bonin and M. Cahen, 351–369. Paris: Publications de la Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 2001.
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Explores the role of the Brazilian produced cachaça, sugarcane- distilled alcohol, in the expansion of slave trade in Benguela, in West Central Africa. Demonstrates the South Atlantic connections between the two Portuguese colonies and how slave labor became fundamental in the production of alcohol used in exchange for more captives on the coast of Africa.
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Ferreira, Roquinaldo. “O Brasil e a Arte da Guerra em Angola (sécs XVII e XVIII).” Estudos Historicos 39 (2007): 3–23.
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Richly researched study that stresses the military link between Brazil and Angola. The colony of Brazil provided soldiers and horses and played an important role in how warfare changed in Angola during the era of the transatlantic slave trade.
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Herlin, Susan. “Brazil and the Commercialization of Kongo, 1840–1870.” In Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil During the Era of Slavery. Edited by José Curto and Paul Lovejoy, 261–283. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004.
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Shows the expansion of Brazilian traders and capital on the Kingdom of Kongo in West Central Africa, during the era of illegal slave exports, and its importance in the transition to legitimate trade.
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Schwartz, Stuart B. “Prata, Açúcar e Escravos: de como o império restaurou Portugal.” Tempo 12.24 (2008): 201–223.
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Artfully written article showing the connections between the Spanish and Portuguese empire in the 17th century. Links the Portuguese control of the slave trade to its ability to acquire silver from the Spanish colonies and expand its sugar industry in Brazil. Argues that the wealth from the overseas territories played an important role in the Portuguese restoration in the 1640s.
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Verger, Pierre. Trade Relations between the Bight of Benin and Bahia from the 17th to the 19th Century. Ibadan, Nigeria: University of Ibadan, 1976.
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Pioneer study on West Africa links to Bahia, in Brazil, and Brazilian presence in West Africa. Published originally in French in 1968, it was later published in English and Portuguese. Innovative research shaped the way scholars understood trade and personal relations in the South Atlantic world.
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Mercantile Networks

The scholarship on mercantile networks in the Atlantic has been dominated by studies on the British trade in the 18th century. Curto 2004, Ebert 2008, and Studnicki-Gizbert 2007 stress the social-capital based mechanisms employed by traders in the South Atlantic to reduce costs and increase profits. Soares 2007, Candido 2007, and Ferreira 2010 point to networks connecting Brazilian merchants to ports in West Africa and the Indian Ocean. Bethencourt and Curto 2007 explores trade networks within the Portuguese empire.

Bethencourt, Francisco, and Diogo Ramada Curto, eds. Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400–1800. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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A collection of essays on different parts of the Portuguese empire. Although the edited volume contains chapters dealing with regions outside of the South Atlantic world, the volume shows the interconnections between colonial spaces. An important collection available in English.
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Candido, Mariana P. “Merchants and the Business of the Slave Trade at Benguela, 1750–1850.” African Economic History 35.1 (2007): 1–30.
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Using wills of traders, travelers’ accounts, and official correspondence available in Angola, this work discusses the slave trade operation in Benguela and the role of merchants based in Brazil.
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Curto, José C. Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and Its Hinterland, c. 1550–1830. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2004.
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This important study draws attention to the trade in alcohol in Angola. The approach stresses the role of Brazilian traders in the slave trade in the South Atlantic.
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Ebert, Christopher. Between Empires: Brazilian Sugar in the Early Atlantic Economy, 1550–1630. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2008.
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Argues that sugar produced in Brazil was traded in the wide Atlantic world in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish merchants transported sugar and connected Brazilian ports to the Atlantic islands of Madeira and São Tomé.
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Ferreira, Roquinaldo. “‘A arte de furtar’: Redes de Comêrcio Ilegal no Mercado Imperial Ultramarino Português (c. 1690–c. 1750).” In Na Trama das Redes: Política e Negócios no Império Português, séculos XVI–XVIII. Edited by João Luís Ribeiro Fragoso and Maria de Fátima Gouveâ, 203–243. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2010.
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An important study of the commerce in textiles between Bahia and Luanda. Shows how mercantile networks moved Asian textiles to Bahia and, later on, Brazilian traders negotiated them in the coast of Africa.
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Soares, Mariza de Carvalho, ed. Rotas Atlânticas da Diáspora Africana: da Baía do Benim ao Rio de Janeiro. Niterói, Brazil: Editora da Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2007.
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A collection of essays on the commercial connections between the underestimated Atlantic route, the Bight of Benin and Rio de Janeiro. Most of the articles focus on the presence of West Africans in Rio de Janeiro and the participation of Brazilian traders in the commerce in slaves in West Africa.
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Studnicki-Gizbert, Daviken. A Nation upon the Ocean Sea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Valuable study of the Portuguese maritime merchant community across the Atlantic. Argues that, unlike other empires, the Portuguese state was not bound to a territorial space. It was dispersed across the seas and maritime traders brought people and bureaucracy together. The Portuguese trade network integrated the early Atlantic markets by acting from different centers, not necessarily from a single trade hub in Europe, which favored their Atlantic connections.
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Cultural Exchanges

In recent decades, scholars have begun exploring cultural exchanges between the coast of the Americas and Africa. Heywood 1999, Matory 2005, and Thornton 1988 focus on religious permanence, inventions, and recreations in the diaspora. Hawthorne 2010 stresses the exchange, incorporation, and adaptation of old agriculture techniques, such as rice cultivation, in the New World. Assunção 2005, Pantoja 2001, Heywood 2002, and Araujo 2010 emphasize the role of Africans as historical agents in transforming cultural expressions, including music, religiosity, and language use

Araujo, Ana Lucia. Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010.
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Addresses the uniqueness of the South Atlantic. Compares public memory of the slave trade and slavery in Brazil and Benin and examines the role of both communities of Afro-Brazilians.
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Assunção, Matthias Rohrig. Capoeira: A History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art. New York: Routledge, 2005.
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Innovative study on martial arts that takes the Atlantic as a unit, exploring the influence of Central African combat games and competitive dances in the Afro-Brazilian martial arts. Shows how the practice of capoeira changed in the early 20th century, incorporating new elements as a result of new dynamics in the Atlantic world.
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Hawthorne, Walter. From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
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Contribution to the debate on the role of Africans in the societies in the New World. Focuses on rice cultivation in Maranhão, Brazil, and the knowledge brought from Upper Guinea. Through a careful analysis of historical evidence, Hawthorne demonstrates that Africans and Amerindians influenced agriculture in colonial Brazil.
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Heywood, Linda. “The Angolan–Afro-Brazilian Cultural Connections.” Slavery and Abolition 20.1 (1999): 9–23.
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Explores the religious continuities and recreations between the Kingdom of Kongo, Angola, and Brazil. Brings the discussion of African influences in Afro-Brazilian religions into the South Atlantic, challenging the idea of a Yoruba predominance.
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Heywood, Linda, ed. Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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Influential collection of essays written by specialists of Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Traces connections between Africa and the Americas, stressing religious and cultural links.
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Matory, J. Lorand. Black Atlantic Religion. Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
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Study on the modern “Black Atlantic.” Yet, unlike Heywood 1999, stresses the Yoruba influence in Brazilian Candomblé and denies any West Central African contribution. Emphasizes transnational links and cultural exchanges between Brazil and West Africa.
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Pantoja, Selma. “A Dimensão Atlântica das Quitandeiras.” In Diálogos Oceânicos. Minas Gerais e as Novas Abordagens para uma História do Império Ultramarino Português. Edited by Júnia F. Furtado, 45–68. Belo Horizonte, Brazil: UFMG, 2001.
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One of few comparative studies on women in the South Atlantic. Analyzes the role of women as street vendors in Brazil and Angola, emphasizing gender, status, and colonialism.
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Thornton, John K. “On the Trail of Voodoo: African Christianity in Africa and the Americas.” The Americas 44 (1988): 261–278.
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Argues for Christianity continuities across the Atlantic, showing how people maintain old cosmologies and adapted them to the New World. Proposes a transatlantic analysis of interaction between European and African religions in the 16th and 17th centuries.
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Circulation of People

Scholars have been following people who crossed the Atlantic as traders, colonial officials, and slaves. The expanding knowledge about the demographic importance of the South Atlantic slave trade allowed researchers to look for individuals and re-create their experiences, showing that colonial borders and state allegiance were fluid. Mattos 2008, Candido 2010, and Ferreira 2007 focus on people who crossed the Atlantic as free and slave and maintained strong coneections across the ocean. Sweet 2009, Hawthorne 2008, Andrews 2007, and Costa e Silva 2004 deal with the emergence of new identities and communities. All studies pursue people, mainly Africans or African descendants, as historical agents in an Atlantic context.

Andrews, George Reid. “Remembering Africa, Inventing Uruguay: Sociedades de Negros in the Montevideo Carnival, 1865–1930.” Hispanic American Historical Review 87.4 (November 2007): 693–726.
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One of the few studies available in English discussing African presence in Uruguay. Exploring black newspapers and Carnival groups, demonstrates how this small country in South America has been connected to the wider Afro-Atlantic world, particularly Cuba and the United States.
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Candido, Mariana. “Different Slave Journeys: Enslaved African Seamen on Board of Portuguese Ship, c. 1760–1820s.” Slavery and Abolition 31.3 (2010): 395–409.
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Explores the role of enslaved Africans who worked as sailors, soldiers, and translators on transatlantic voyages. Discusses the importance of African crew members on Portuguese ships connecting the coast of Africa and Brazil.
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Costa e Silva, Alberto da. Francisco Félix de Souza, Mercador de Escravos. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2004.
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Explores the life of the Brazilian Francisco Félix de Souza, one of the most important slave traders in Ouidah. Reconstructs his family, political, and commercial connections.
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Ferreira, Roquinaldo. “Atlantic Microhistories: Mobility, Personal Ties, and Slaving in the Black Atlantic World (Angola and Brazil).” In Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic. Edited by Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca, and David H. Treece, 99–128. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
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Focuses on different slave traders based in Benguela. Explores circulation of people and connections between Benguela and Rio de Janeiro.
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Hawthorne, Walter. “Being now, as it were, one family”: Shipmate Bonding on the Slave Vessel Emilia, in Rio de Janeiro, and Throughout the Atlantic World.” Luso-Brazilian Review 45.1 (2008): 53–77.
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Explores shipmate ties developed among African slaves across the Atlantic, which overshadow previous identities. Argues that the Atlantic is the stage for the creation of new social ties, rather than a space of social death.
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Mattos, Hebe. “Black Troops” and Hierarchies of Color in the Portuguese Atlantic World: The Case of Henrique Dias and His Black Regiment.” Luso-Brazilian Review 45.1 (2008): 6–29.
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An important article that follows the establishment of hiearchies of color classification in military order in the Portuguese empire during the 17th century. Explores notions of racial exclusion and social mobility within the empire by comparing similarities and differences between Angola and Brazil.
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Sweet, James. “Mistaken Identities? Olaudah Equiano, Domingos Álvares, and the Methodological Challenges of Studying the African Diaspora.” American Historical Review 114 (2009): 279–306.
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Important study that focuses on the life of a person to discuss circulation of people, ideas, and old/new identities. Explores the enslavement of Álvares and his life in Brazil and Portugal.
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Africans in the Americas

A significant body of the literature on the South Atlantic world focuses on African presence in the Americas. The classic study of the slave population in Rio de Janeiro by Mary Karasch (Karasch 1987) challenged the idea that it was not possible to write the history of the African presence in Brazil. The insightful works Lovejoy 2005 and Landers and Robinson 2006 include Africa in the understanding of the slave experience in the Americas. Soares 2000 and Reis 2008 stress religious ceremonies and spaces as important components of African lives in the Americas. Andrews 2004 and Cáceres 2001 stress African presence in Spanish America, while Mamigonian 2009 focuses on the ambiguous status of liberated Africans in Brazil.

Andrews, George R. Afro-Latin America, 1800–2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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Important study that discusses the history of Afro–Latin American population during the 19th and 20th centuries. It covers slavery, abolition, and transition to freedom, new ideas of citizenship, whitening policies, the growing black movements, and the current situations. Comprehensive in its coverage of Latin America, focuses on the countries with largest black population (Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, and Panama).
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Cáceres, Rina, ed. Rutas de la Esclavitud en África y América Latina. San José, Costa Rica: Universidade de Costa Rica, 2001.
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Pioneering work in Spanish, bringing eight articles from specialists on slavery and African diaspora. The slave trade to Spanish America plays the central role and its size, duration, and consequences are discussed. Important chapters on the relationship between Amerindian and African slave populations and slave trade to Buenos Aires and Veracruz.
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Karasch, Mary. Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
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Pioneering study on slavery in Rio de Janeiro and the role of ethnic bonding in the Americas. Based on careful and exhaustive archival work, stresses the role of West Central Africa–born slaves in Brazil. Chapters deal with religious life, cultural practices, resistance, and manumission.
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Landers, Jane, and Barry M. Robinson, eds. Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006.
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Contains important articles on slave protests and revolts in New Granada and Brazil; citizenship discussions in Argentina; and African identity in Cuba. Essays are accompanied with primary sources translated into English.
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Lovejoy, Paul E. “The Urban Background of Enslaved Muslims in the Americas.” Slavery and Abolition 26.3 (2005): 349–376.
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Explores the urban background of Muslim slaves and how it affected experiences and expectations in the Americas. Shows how skills such as craft specialization, literacy, and political and social consciousness made it easy to adjust to life in the New World.
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Mamigonian, Beatriz. “In the Name of Freedom: Slave Trade Abolition, the Law and the Brazilian Branch of the African Emigration Scheme (Brazil–British West Indies), 1830s–1850s.” Slavery and Abolition 30.1 (2009): 41–66.
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Important study on Africans liberated by the British government in the 19th century. Mamigonian reveals the scheme linking the British patrols to the plantations in the British West Indies. With the excuse of curtailing slavery in Brazil, British officials transported “freed” Africans as indentured laborers to the colonies in the Caribbean.
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Reis, João José. Domingos Sodré. Um Sacerdote Africano. Escravidão, Liberdade e Candomblé na Bahia do Século XIX. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2008.
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Detailed examination of the life of Sodré, born in Onim, in present-day Nigeria. Enslaved, he arrived in Bahia and witnessed several slave revolts. A fascinating micro-history that traces the life of an African man from freedom to captivity and then his remaking as a freed man.
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Soares, Mariza de Carvalho. Devotos da Cor. Identidade étnica, Religiosidade e Escravidão no Rio de Janeiro do Século XVIII. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2000.
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Innovative study on Catholic Church brotherhoods and social mobility of Africans, in particular Mina slaves in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Argues that religious groups offered Africans the opportunity to assume new identities and to recreate social networks in colonial Brazil.
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