The Trade in the Living: The Formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic, Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries

“This is an essential book. It’s dense and longer than the other books, and it covers an earlier period. It’s important for understanding how Brazil could not have existed without the region of West Central Africa, what is present day Angola. The Portuguese arrived in West Central Africa in the 15th century, and it became a Portuguese colony between the end of the 16th century and the first decades of the 17th century. What the Portuguese were doing in that region, and what they were doing in Brazil, was connected. They were transporting enslaved people from West Central Africa to Brazil. When the Dutch invaded Brazil in the 17th century, they also invaded Angola and there were Portuguese troops fighting them on both sides of the Atlantic.” Read more...

The best books on The History of Brazil and Slavery

Ana Lucia Araujo, Historian