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Palmares: An African State in Brazil*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

R. K. Kent
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Without slaves from Africa, reported an early Portuguese source, ‘it is impossible to do anything in Brazil’ Although prior arrivals are suspected, the first known landing of slaves from Africa on Brazilian soil took place in 1552. In 1580, five years after the founding of Loanda and on the eve of Brazil's sugar boom, there were no fewer than 10,000 Africans in Brazil. Fifty years later, Pernambuco alone imported 4,400 slaves annually from Africa. It also contained 150 engenhos, or a third of the total sugar-mill and plantation complex in Brazil. In 1630, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) captured Pernambuco, and within a decade Portugal had abandoned Brazil to the Dutch. It was ultimately the decision of local settlers, the moradores, to fight the West India Company that led to restoration of Portuguese control in 1654. The Dutch retreat from Brazil, however, was secured through a joint Afro-Portuguese effort which gave the Black Regiment of Henrique Dias its colonial fame. If early settlement and a sugar-based economy could not have been sustained without the African labourer, neither could the Portuguese continue to hold Brazil without the African soldier. The subsequent evolution of Brazil is no less a story of Euro-African enterprise. Exploitation of gold and diamonds in the eighteenth century, pioneering shifts of population from the coast to the interior, dilution of monoculture, formation of mining states or advent of an abolitionist movement in the nineteenth century were all dependent on the same combination. The blend of race, language and culture in contemporary Brazil confirms this evolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , July 1965 , pp. 161 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1965

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References

1 Quoted by de Neto Mello, J. A. G. in Novos Estudos Afro-Brasileiros, 1937, II, 205. The original source is Breve Discurso Sobre o Estado das Quatras Capitanias Conquistadas (n.d.).Google Scholar

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7 ‘Negro’, as a term used in colonial Brazil, did not apply to pretos (‘Blacks’) alone. It included sometimes pardos or gente do cor, people ‘of colour’ not easily accepted as either pretos or brancos (‘Whites’). It also applied to crioulos or those born in Brazil of African or mixed parentage, to ladinos or those who spoke Portuguese and usually espoused the Catholic faith, and to the Africanos or those who were neither Portuguese-speaking nor native to Brazil.

8 For a recent summary in the pages of this Journal, see Rodrigues, José Honório, ‘The Influence of Africa on Brazil and of Brazil on Africa’, J.A.H., III (1962), 49–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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17 Revista do Instituto Historico e Geographico Brasileiro (1841), III, 151–4; (1851), XIV, 491.

18 First-hand descriptions (1645), ‘Diario da Viagem do Capitão João Blaer aos Palmares’, actually written by Jürgens Reijmbach (extract from the Brieven en Papieren uit Brasilien, translated into Portuguese by de Carvalho, Alfredo for the Revista do Instituto Arqueológico Pernambucano (1902), X, 87–96;Google Scholar (1675–1678) ‘Relacão das Guerras feitas aos Palmares de Pernambuco no tempo do Governador d. Pedro de Almeida’, R.I.H.G.B. (1859), XXII, 303–29.Google Scholar Material from the Municipality of Alagoas: (1668–80) 22 ‘Documentos’ from the Segundo Livro de Veracões (n.d.). Material from the Arquivo Historico Colonial in Lisbon: (1671–97) 95 ‘Documentos’ collected and published by Ennes, Ernesto (1938), 133–484.Google Scholar First-hand descriptions and materials from Municipality of Alagoas have been printed together in the document appendix to Carneiro's, EdisonO Quilombo dos Palmares, 2nd edition (1958), 201–68,Google Scholar and will be quoted from that volume. Material of dubious value: ‘Memoria dos feitos que se deram durante os primeiros anos da Guerra corn os Negros quilombolas, dos Palmares’, R.I.H.G.B. (1876), xxxix, 293–322. This would-be ‘Memoria dos feitos has been discredited as a doctored copy of the ‘Relacão das Guerras’, published in the same Review seventeen years earlier.

19 Cf. Pitta, 1880, Book VIII, 235; Southey (1819), III, 23; Do Loreto Couto, Domincos, Desaggravos do Brasil e glorias do Pernambuco (1757), Book VIII, chap. 4; and F. A. de Varnhagen, Historia geral do Brasil, 1930 ed., III, 319.Google Scholar

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45, 46 Barleus (1923), 315.

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62 Sotto-Maior to Overseas Council (8 August 1685), in Ennes (1938), 142.

63 Southey (1819), III, 24.

64 O Quilombo (1958), 62.

65 Pitta (1880), 237.

66 ‘Bando do Governador Fernāo de Souza Coutinho acerca de armas proibidas—Pamares’, in Carneiro (1958), 227–8.

67 Condicões e Capitulos, Ennes (1938), 24.

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79 ‘João da Fonesca pede a Camara de Alagoas mantimentos para a tropa estacionada nos arredores dos Palmares (26 January 1680)’, Carneiro (1958), 244–5.

80 ‘Relacão das Legoas de Terra’, Documento †8, Ennes (1938), 153.

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82 Ibid.

83 Ennes (1949), 202.

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85 Caetano de Melo e Castro to Overseas Council (18 February 1694), Ennes (1938), 195.

86 ‘Quantia despendida pela Carnara de Alagoas corn a guerra nos Palinares (20 July 1680’, Carneiro (1958), 248.

87 Quoted by Ennes (1949), 205.

88 November 1685, Ennes (1949), 204; translation here is Ennes' own.

89 The Palmares ‘Republic’ (1949) 200–16.

90 Rodrigues (1945), 137.