Lecture Outline:
A. African Slavery
1. Plantations in Brazil: Sugar and Coffee
2. Urban Slavery
3. Variations in Scale and Periodization: The Caribbean,
Mexico and Peru
B. Adaptation and Resistance
1. Patterns and Strategies of Emancipation
2. Rebellion and Flight: The demands at Ilheus
2. The Problem of Conceptualizing Resistance, Adaptation and
Concession: The Roça as Case Study
Key Terms:
Plantation
Engenho/ Senhor de Engenho Lavrador de Cana |
Fazenda
Roça/ Roceiro Agregado |
Carta da Alforria (or Carta de Liberdade)
Quilombo |
Reading Assignment:
Mary Karasch, "Anastacia and The Slave Women of Rio" from Africans in Bondage, pp.79-105.
Stuart Schwartz and James Lockhart, "Brazilian Beginnings”
Stuart Schwartz, Chapter Two, "Sugar Plantation Labor and Slave Life" from Slaves, Peasants and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery, pp.39-65.
Questions for Consideration:
1. How much control over the slave system did the following actors have in colonial Brazil: kings and merchants in Portugal, local sugar planters, and slaves? After you consider this, reconsider the questions with which we began the class about top-down versus bottom-up change in order to answer the question. To what degree does slavery fit into the two models of colonialism?
2. Why didn't more slaves rebel? (To answer this, you must use the class discussions of the Ilheus rebellion and roceiros in conjunction with the readings.)
3. How might the life of a male lavrador de cana differ from the
life of Anastacia? Be sure to indicate in what region of Brazil they
might live, in what kind of building they would sleep, what they might
eat, what work they might perform and what their relationship to other
slaves and to their masters might be.