Children of God's Fire

“Conrad's Children of God's Fire [originally Princeton, 1984] provides abundant material for historians and students of African slavery in Brazil to understand what the slaves actually experienced. It is an invaluable contribution both to the scholarly examination of Brazilian slavery and to the evolving debate on comparative slave systems in the Americas. . . . Conrad's documentary collection makes the primary evidence of the real character of Brazilian slavery available to a much wider audience.”

—Latin American Research Review

“Conrad’s book will stand as an indispensable teaching aid for those anxious to flesh out existing monographs. The wealth of documents within his collection will surely enable students to look with profit at Brazilian slavery at the same time as they study the servile institution elsewhere in the Americas, where such materials have long been available.”

—Journal of Latin American Studies

“By the publication of these 117 documents, most translated from the Portuguese, Robert Conrad has removed any reason for ignorance [about slavery in Brazil], for they represent an unrelieved chronicle of the oppression of one race by another. . . . Sources include British consular reports, travelers’ narratives, newspaper advertisements, sermons, regional laws, Jesuit accounts, records of the Brazilian house of deputies, and reports by a select committee of the British house of lords and personal correspondence. Of special interest are seven documents attributable to persons of African descent. . . . This selection is a major contribution to the literature and is required reading for students of Brazilian history, of comparative colonialism and colonialism in the Americas, and of systems of slavery.”

—International History Review

“A landmark in the historiography of slavery.”

—Journal of Social History