Much of the research on Atlantic history is based on one of the Atlantic's shores. Walter Hawthorne's new book is a truly Atlantic history because it is concerned with both sides of the ocean and the Middle Passage. It deals with the movement of slaves from the Upper Guinea Coast to Maranhao and Para provinces in Brazil, where the Guineans made up the overwhelming majority of the slave population. The development of these Amazonian provinces was slow until the second half of the eighteenth century and depended then on slaves from Guinea because of the shorter distance and the nature of winds and currents. Hawthorne begins with a careful analysis of the slave trade in the Upper Guinea Coast. Unlike other slave-producing areas, the slaves in this region were acquired very close to the ports of Bissau and Cacheu, and either came from a complex of decentralized societies near the coast or from Mandinka in the near hinterland. He then describes their transfer across the Atlantic and the nature of the Amazonian economy into which they were integrated largely as rice producers. Their languages disappeared because they were too varied, but their culture persisted because they were a large homogeneous group. He uses this case study to refute or refine the ideas of a number of earlier scholars.

Hawthorne begins with a meticulous examination of the structure of the slave trade in Guinea. Based on raiding, kidnapping, and judicial penalties, it produced a small, but constant flow of slaves from all parts of the region, who were moved to and held in Bissau and Cacheu. He then goes on to examine the experience of slaves in transit and work life in Maranhao. He argues that because of the similarities of Guinean cultures and the absence of a dominant ethnic group, they forged a new unity in the barracoons and on the Middle Passage. Once in Amazonia, they tended overwhelmingly to marry other slaves from the same areas. In spite of the problems of plantation life, particularly the widespread relations, both short-term and long-term between white men and slave women, they tended to form stable and durable unions. He sees two important areas of continuity: family life and religion. His chapter on marriage, family, and family culture is excellent, as is his discussion of sexual relationships between white men and women of color. Men outnumbered women among both black and white and among both free and slave. The problem African men had in finding marriage partners was intensified by the fact that slave owners believed that they had the right to enjoy the bodies of their female slaves and sometimes their male slaves. This was as true of married as of unmarried slave-owners. They raped their slaves, took them as concubines, and sometimes entered long-time unions with them. On religion, he describes the survival of African traditional practices and belief. He takes issue with Robin Horton's argument about religious conversion, arguing that Guinean traditions were capable of absorbing Christian and Muslim ideas.

The Guinea coast being a rice growing area, he wades into the Black Rice controversy, much amending the controversial arguments of Judith Carney and Edda Fields-Black. He argues that rice was native to the area and that Portuguese farmers in Amazonia were experimenting with rice long before the arrival of significant numbers of Guineans. Furthermore, methods of clearing the land were different from Guinea and much less protective of the environment. The role of Guineans, particularly women, was of value in the actual cultivation process. Hawthorne also deals with the debate on survivals and creolization that has swirled around Sidney Mintz and Richard Price for years. In some sense, both sides of this debate are right. There are survivals and there is creolization. Hawthorne's argument is nuanced, but it focuses on the first generation. He does have limited evidence for Guinean identity extending into the second generation. The question is what happens in the third, the fourth, and subsequent generations, when clearly, a new Afro-Brazilian community coalesced. The interesting questions then are what that community's values and institutions take from their African roots. It is noteworthy that terreiros da minas (vodun houses) have become important spiritual centers in Maranhoa, perhaps because they provide a physical locale for religious observances not provided by the more diffuse practices of largely decentralized Guinean religion. It would be interesting to compare contemporary Afro-Brazilian culture in Maranhao to Salvador and Rio to better understand the long-run impact of African roots.

This is a superb book. Hawthorne uses a wide range of sources from company, church, and state archives, and from both sides of the Atlantic. He uses them critically, gives a nuanced analysis, and speaks to various arguments that have been made about processes of change brought by the slave trade.