Book Reviews

Hawthorne, Walter (2010) From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and anAtlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, MA andNew York, NY), xvii + 288 pp. £52.25 hbk, £17.09 pbk.

Over the past years historians of the Atlantic World have begun building bridges thatbring together past and present scholarship focusing on slavery and the slave trade onboth sides of the Atlantic. Walter Hawthorne’s book is the newest contribution to thisongoing effort. Despite what the title may suggest, this book is not about Africa orBrazil, but about Upper Guinea and its inhabitants and their diaspora in the northernAmazonian regions of Para and Maranhao in Brazil. In its pages Hawthorne makes aseries of arguments that to a large extent may become foundational for all those trying toestablish historical connections between the African regions where slaves were fetchedand exported from and the American regions where they were forced to start new lives.

In this book Hawthorne makes two main claims. First, basing his argument on thecharacteristics of the historical sources that he consulted, he states that through theethnicities recorded in historical documents produced in the Americas – in this casePara and Maranhao – it is possible to determine to a precise extent where exactly the

© 2012 The Authors. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2012 Society for Latin American StudiesBulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 31, No. 3 383

Book Reviews

African slaves hailed from. Second, he argues that the enslavement of West Africansin Brazil –and this could apply to other peoples and places in the Americas – producedboth continuities and ruptures in Africans’ lives. He highlights the fact that in spiteof the repression they were submitted to in New World societies, they managed tocontrol their destinies to a certain extent, depending on a series of factors that affectedtheir day-to-day lives. Particularly important is his assertion that Upper Guineans fromdifferent ethnic groups were able to find common cultural elements during the MiddlePassage, and once transplanted to northern Brazil they managed to form coherentcommunities based on experiences and beliefs that were familiar to all of them. In otherwords, Hawthorne states that those slaves who made the transatlantic journey togetherformed strong bonds that lasted for the rest of their lives.

From Africa to Brazil is divided in two parts. Part 1 offers a series of insights onthe process of enslavement and ulterior shipment of slaves in Upper Guinea. HereHawthorne offers reinforcement to the scholarship that currently attempts to highlightthe contributions made by African peoples and cultures to the history of the Atlantic, asopposed to those who have associated the Atlantic basin with Euro-American cultures.According to Hawthorne, warfare was one of the main reasons behind the enslavementof people in the area, although accusations of witchcraft and trade needs were alsoamong the most frequent reasons leading to someone becoming a slave.

Here Hawthorne also contests previous contributions made by scholars such asWalter Rodney and Boubacar Barry, who considered the Futa Jallon jihad of theeighteenth century as the main reason for slave exports in the Upper Guinea region. Byshowing – mostly through Brazilian records – that most of the men, women and childrenexported from this region’s ports belonged to areas in the near proximity of the coast,and thus were enslaved due to local reasons rather than due to the aforementionedjihad, Hawthorne demonstrates conclusively that the Futa Jallon jihad’s impact uponthe slave trade in ports like Bissau and Cacheu was quite limited.

In Part 2, Hawthorne focuses on the American side of the story. His ‘Brown-Ricethesis’ about the interactions of knowledge between Africans, Europeans and indigenousAmerican peoples when it came to growing rice in Maranhao and Para is an innovativeway to look at a phenomenon that has been recently a matter of discussion in the pagesof the American Historical Review (AHR), and that has opened the door for a seriesof new arguments regarding the contribution of the Africans to American societies. ForHawthorne there is no question about the fact that Africans, despite the limitationsthey found because of their very condition as slaves, were able to have a certain degreeof agency to shape their own lives, especially when it came to creating a family. Hisoutlook of slave agency constitutes a fresh endorsement to those who disagree withOrlando Patterson’s Social Death thesis.

To conclude, Walter Hawthorne’s book of the Upper Guineans in Maranhao andPara is a refreshing, innovative and groundbreaking study of the connections thatexisted between Africa and the Americas during the centuries of slave trade. Boththeoretically and especially methodologically, this book offers new ways of looking atand writing the history of the Africans in the Americas. Although, predictably, someof its findings cannot be applied to other historical periods and places, its contributionand value as a pillar amongst the new studies of slavery in the Atlantic World isunquestionable.

Manuel BarciaUniversity of Leeds

© 2012 The Authors. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2012 Society for Latin American Studies384 Bulletin of Latin American Research Vol. 31, No. 3