Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil - Paperback

by Robert Edgar Conrad (Editor)

Contents

List of Illustrations xiii

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xxvii

Part I. "Men of Stone and of Iron" The African Slave Trade

1.1. The Beginnings of the Portuguese-African Slave Trade in the Fifteenth Century, as Described by the Chronicler Gomes Eannes de Azurara 5

1.2. The Enslavement Process in the Portuguese Dominions of King Philip III of Spain in the Early Seventeenth Century 11

1.3. A Portuguese Doctor Describes the Suffering of Black Slaves in Africa and on the Atlantic Voyage (1793) 15

1.4. A Young Black Man Tells of His Enslavement in Africa and Shipment to Brazil about the Middle of the Nineteenth Century 23

1.5. An Ex-Slavetrader's Account of the Enslavement Process in Africa and the Illegal Traffic to Brazil (1848-1849) 28

1.6. "It Was the Same as Pigs in a Sty" A Young African's Account of Life on a Slave Ship (1849) 37

1.7. A Slave Revolt at Sea and Brutal Reprisals (1845) 39

1.8. A British Physician Describes the State of Africans upon Their Arrival in Brazil (1841-1843) 43

1.9. A British Clergyman's Impressions of the Valongo Slave Market in Rio de Janeiro (1828) 48

Part II. "A Hell for Blacks" Slavery in Rural Brazil

2.1. An Italian Jesuit Advises Sugar Planters on the Treatment of Their Slaves (1711) 55

2.2. A Royal Decree on the Feeding of Slaves and Their Days Off (1701) 60

2.3. "I Doubt that the Moors Are So Cruel to Their Slaves" The Feeding of Slaves in Late Colonial Bahia 61

2.4. The Masters and the Slaves: A Frenchman's Account of Society in Rural Pernambuco Early in the Nineteenth Century 63

2.5. "The African Man Transformed into the American Beast" Slavery in Rural Pernambuco in the 1840s 71

2.6. Practical Advice on the Management of Plantation Slaves (1847) 77

2.7. Slave Life on a Plantation in the Province of Rio de Janeiro in the Late Nineteenth Century 79

2.8. A Medical Report on Slaves on Five Coffee Plantations in the Province of Rio de Janeiro (1853) 86

2.9. "There Are Plantations Where the Slaves Are Numb with Hunger" A Medical Thesis on Plantation Diseases and Their Causes (1847) 91

2.10. The Annual Work Routine on Plantations in Maranhao in the Mid-Nineteenth Century 96

2.11. A Brazilian Senator Comments on the High Mortality among Rural Slave Children in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century 99

2.12. A Bahian Sugar Planter Registers His Slaves (1872) 100

Part III. Slave Life in Cities and at the Mines

3.1. Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro as Seen through Newspaper Advertisements (1821) 111

3.2. A North American Describes Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro (1846) 115

3.3. A Royal Navy Surgeon Discusses the Black Coffee Carriers of Rio de Janeiro (1848) 124

3.4. The Sedan Chair and the Hammock: Urban Transportation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 126

3.5. Slave Prostitutes in the Brazilian Capital (1871) 129

3.6. Newspaper Advertisements for Black Wet Nurses (1821-1854) 133

3.7. A French Doctor with Twelve Years of Medical Experience in Brazil Advises Mothers on Choosing a Black Wet Nurse (1843) 135

3.8. Was the Black Wet Nurse a Transmitter of Disease? A Medical Debate in Rio de Janeiro (1846) 137

3.9. The Black Wet Nurse: A Status Symbol (1863) 139

3.10. Slave Workers at the Diamond Washings of Tejuco, Minas Gerais, in the Early Nineteenth Century 140

3.11. Black Miners at a British-Owned Gold Mine in the 1860s 143

3.12. "Common Graves" How City Slaves Were Buried 147

Part IV. "From Babylon to Jerusalem" Slavery and the Catholic Church

4.1. Slavery and Church Doctrine

Author Biography

Robert E. Conrad is the author of The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-88 (1972; reissued Krieger, 1993), World of Sorrow: The African Slave Trade to Brazil (1986), and translator/editor of Sandino: The Testimony of a Nicaraguan Patriot, 1921-1934 (1990).