Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil, (Paperback)

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