The Boundaries of Freedom

This carefully curated collection of essays opens the vibrant field of Brazilian slavery and abolition studies to English-language readers.

This book brings together key scholars writing on Brazilian slavery and abolition, emphasizing the profound impact it had on the social, political, and institutional history of modern Brazil. For the first time, English-language readers can access in one place arguments that have transformed the historiography of Brazilian slavery.The Boundaries of Freedom brings together, for the first time in English, writings on the social and cultural history of Brazilian slavery, emphasizing the centrality of slavery, abolition, and Black subjectivity in the forging of modern Brazil. Nearly five million enslaved Africans were forced to Brazil's shores over four and a half centuries, making slavery integral to every aspect of its colonial and national history, stretching beyond temporal and geographical boundaries. This book introduces English-language readers to a paradigm-shifting renaissance in Brazilian scholarship that has taken place in the past several decades, upending longstanding assumptions on slavery's relation to law, property, sexuality and family; reconceiving understandings of slave economies; and engaging with issues of agency, autonomy, and freedom. These vibrant debates are explored in fifteen essays that place the Brazilian experience in dialogue with the afterlives of slavery worldwide. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.