As historians of northeastern Brazil are well aware, the study of abolition in that nation has largely focused on the experiences of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In other words, although the Brazilian northeast was the site of one of Brazil's largest and oldest slave societies, we know very little about how abolition came about in the state – Bahia – or the city – Salvador – that housed and houses the largest population of African descent in Brazil, or indeed, in the Americas. If for no other reason, then, historians of Brazil – and of Latin America more generally – should read Dale Thurston Graden's study of emancipation and its immediate aftermath in Bahia. Yet, Graden's book does more than simply fill a gap in existing literature: here he offers an analysis of the complex process through which abolition occurred in Bahia, a Brazilian state often dismissed as the last bastion of Brazil's slaveocracy. From Slavery to Freedom in Brazil: Bahia, 1835–1900 is more than just a local history of how the end of slavery came about in a Brazilian state. It is an in-depth study – from below as well as from above – of the men and women, people and processes that led to the end of slavery in the largest African-descended community in the last nation to abolish African enslavement in the Americas.

Over the course of the nine chapters of his book, Graden argues that a wide variety of people and social groups led to the abolition of slavery in Bahia. Chapter one deals with the slave trade and the decisive role that the British played in ending it. Chapter two deals with the slave revolts of the first half of the nineteenth century – what Stuart Schwartz called the War to End Bahian Slavery (Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society, Cambrige, 1985) – and the fear that those revolts engendered among Bahian elites and their counterparts elsewhere in Brazil. According to Graden, that fear made those elites more willing to consider ceasing the importation of Africans than they otherwise might have been. Chapter three goes on to show the ways in which the forced recruitment of the free poor and the enslaved for military service during Brazil's war with Paraguay (1865–70) led middle sectors, the free poor – and particularly that descended from Africans – to question the legitimacy of the Brazilian state. That disillusionment with the imperial government translated to interest in antislavery legislation, ending with the passage of Brazil's Law of the Free Womb in 1871. Chapter four addresses the poetry of one of Brazil's most important – if short lived – abolitionist poets, Castro Alves. Alves authored poems that would become anthems of the abolitionist movement, particularly ‘The Slave Ship’ and ‘Salute to Palmares’, and played a pivotal role in introducing ‘Enlightenment thought associated with international abolition’ to the attention of his fellow citizens as well as to the enslaved. Most importantly, according to Graden, he tried to break down barriers between white abolitionists and Brazil's black majority. Chapter five considers the connections between the Afro-Bahian religion Candomblé and abolition. Here, Graden argues that Candomblé ‘quietly (and sometimes not so quietly!) encouraged its followers to undermine and subvert’ slavery in Bahia. Chapter six looks at slavery in Bahia after the passage of the Law of the Free Womb (1871), the interprovincial slave trade and the impact of both on the development of political activism among free blacks and the enslaved in the last two decades of the slavery. Chapter seven takes up the subject of the abolitionist societies that popped up in Bahia in the last decade of slavery. Of particular interest in this chapter are the activities of the journalists who wrote about emancipation and the attorneys who attempted to win it in the courts. Finally, the last chapter, eight, considers the responses of both ex-slaves and ex-masters after slavery was over. Of particular interest in this chapter, he calls Canudos, where the messianic leader Antônio Conselheiro held sway over thousands of poor northeastern Brazilians in the 1890s, Brazil's last community of escaped slaves, convincingly arguing that many of Conselheiro's followers were newly freed captives. He also suggests that Brazilian elites and the government that represented them feared Conselheiro because he was attempting to upset the social hierarchy that they were attempting to maintain even though slavery was over.

Graden looks at abolition from both above and below. Although he devotes most attention to looking at the ways in which slaves and free blacks contributed to the abolition movement, he does not leave aside the role played by the British or by the state and imperial legislators. As a result, he avoids involvement in the debates over whether elites or slave agency brought about abolition in Brazil. Rather, he shows how events outside of Brazil – British harassment of slave ships, wars in Africa and South America – and the actions of the enslaved themselves all contributed to the behaviour of elites. He makes clear that although Bahia's sugar aristocracy did not support abolition, a broad cross sector of Bahia's middle groups did and so too did Bahia's slaves. Thus, he clearly shows his intellectual debts to both Emília Viotti da Costa and to Maria Helena Machado.

Graden sees every aspect of nineteenth-century Brazilian politics, society and culture as related to the subjects of slavery and freedom. Some might argue that he overstates the situation, but this reader was convinced. While he demonstrates that the enslaved opposed enslavement throughout nineteenth-century Brazil, he also clearly shows that the people in the middle – between the enslaved and the aristocracy – gradually lost faith in the system and, by the 1880s, overwhelmingly supported and anticipated emancipation. In this way, he suggests that the position of the people in the middle was essential to both the maintenance of slavery and its end.