Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil

Combining modern scholarship with a wealth of documentary and archivalvidence, this is an authoritative portrait of the lives of slaves and freeersons of colour in colonial Brazil. The author charts the workingonditions, domestic lives, preoccupations and aspirations of slaves andheir fellow freed men. In a work which underlines the validity andmportance of minority histories, he argues that the slaves and freedmen ofolonial Brazil maintained and preserved their own cultural identity, takingecisions independently of the white ruling class. The result is not aistory of extremes - black and white, slave and master - but instead anccount of the ambiguities surrounding issues of race, freedom and thendividual, which provides an insight not only in to the past and present ofrazil, but also into areas of racial and social identity. With an extensivereface outlining recent developments in the field, and a full and updatedibliography, this edition of aims to provide information for students andistorians alike.

A. J. R. Russell-Wood is the Herbert Baxter Adams Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA.