num_pages: 544
description: Robert Edgar Conrad has compiled more than one hundred original documents, most of them translated from Portuguese, describing one of the world's most enduring slave systems, from its beginnings in the 1400s to its abolition by law in 1888. Depicting thew African slave trade and slavery in every region of Brazil, these documents tell a grim story of the life of Brazilian slaves, supporting recent challenges to the theory that Latin American slavery was milder than slavery in the United States. Throughout the volume are contemporary illustrations, themselves valuable documents, that confirm the written evidence of oppression. The book deals with such aspects of slavery as labor conditions, food, hygiene, housing, family manumission, the role of the Catholic Church, the legal structure, problems of women, corporal punishment, race relations, runaways, revolts, and the abolition struggle. The material is placed in historical context by a general introduction and introduction to the ten chapters and to individual documents.
language: English
title: Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil
titlecomplete: Children of God's Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil
genres: Nonfiction, History, Race, Brazil
ratings_count: 45
publisher: Princeton University Press