Sugar and slavery: the largest slave society in the Americas
Sugar plantations in the northeast, and later mines and coffee farms, are built on the labour of nearly five million enslaved Africans, more than any other country in the Americas received.
- Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database — SlaveVoyages
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
- A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)
- Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia — João José Reis, Johns Hopkins University Press (1993)
- Casa-Grande & Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves) — Gilberto Freyre, Maia & Schmidt (1933)
From the 1530s the Portuguese began to plant sugar cane along the humid northeastern coast, especially in Pernambuco and Bahia. By the end of the sixteenth century Brazil was the world’s leading sugar producer. Sugar needed a great deal of hard labour: cutting cane, feeding the mills and boiling the juice day and night through the harvest. As Indigenous workers died or fled, planters turned to Africa, where Portugal already had trading posts.
- A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
The scale
No country in the Americas received more enslaved Africans. Estimates based on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database put the number brought to Brazil at nearly five million between the sixteenth century and 1850, close to four in ten of all Africans carried across the Atlantic, and many times more than reached what became the United States.
- Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database — SlaveVoyages
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
Life and death on the plantation
The heart of the system was the engenho, the sugar mill and its plantation, with the master’s casa-grande (big house) and the slaves’ senzala (quarters). Work was relentless and punishments were savage. Because buying new captives was cheap, many planters worked people to death rather than invest in families. Historians note that the enslaved population in Brazil did not grow naturally the way it did in the United States, and depended on constant imports.
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
Slavery was not confined to sugar. Enslaved people mined gold in Minas Gerais in the eighteenth century, grew coffee in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in the nineteenth, worked as porters, artisans, sellers and domestic servants in the cities, and were owned by people of very modest means, including some freed people of colour. It was a whole society built on slavery, not just a plantation sector.
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)
Resistance and freedom
The enslaved resisted constantly: by running away to form quilombos, the most famous of which was Palmares; by slowing work and sabotage; and by revolt. The best known is the 1835 uprising of mostly Muslim, Yoruba-speaking Africans in Salvador, the Malê Revolt, which was crushed but terrified the elite.
- Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia — João José Reis, Johns Hopkins University Press (1993)
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil — Edward E. Telles, Princeton University Press (2004)
The legacy
African peoples brought their gods, rhythms, foods and words. Candomblé grew from Yoruba, Fon and Bantu traditions in Bahia; samba and capoeira have African roots; dishes like acarajé and vatapá came with them.
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
- Capoeira circle — UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (2014)
- The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850–1888 — Robert Conrad, University of California Press (1972)
- Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil — Edward E. Telles, Princeton University Press (2004)
Writers following Gilberto Freyre in the 1930s argued that Portuguese slavery was gentler and more intimate than its Anglo-American counterpart, and that close contact between masters and slaves produced a uniquely mixed, tolerant society.
- Casa-Grande & Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves) — Gilberto Freyre, Maia & Schmidt (1933)
Brazilian slavery was among the most brutal in the Americas. High death rates on plantations were made up by constant new imports from Africa, rather than by enslaved families growing. Frequent manumission and racial mixing coexisted with violence and did not make the system milder.
- Slavery in Brazil — Herbert S. Klein and Francisco Vidal Luna, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
- The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850–1888 — Robert Conrad, University of California Press (1972)
Why it matters today
Slavery is the foundation of modern Brazil's inequalities. More than half of Brazilians today identify as Black or brown, and they remain poorer, less likely to reach university and far more likely to be killed. Afro-Brazilian religion, music, food and language are everywhere, but so is the racism slavery left behind.