Annotation In this personal account of modern-day slavery, Breton travels through Brazil tracing the elements and subjects of the cruel and deceitful practices of debt-bondage that enmesh thousands of Amazon migrant workers. Breton interviews slaves and those who benefit from slavery, and discusses efforts to eradicate it. The book is illustrated with a handful of black & white photographs and explanatory charts. Breton, an author and English teacher who settled in a remote corner of southeastern Brazil, writes for a general audience. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

"A well-researched, skillfully-written, and carefully-argued diplomatic history examining connections between the United States, Brazil, Africa, and Europe as they relate to the transatlantic slave trade. Horne sheds considerable light upon the ideas, ruminations, and practices of U.S. nationals in their interactions with and encounters of Brazil over the question of slavery, especially from the mid-nineteenth century on, and makes a valuable and important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of (American) hemispheric relations and trajectories, both eventual and potential."--Michael A. Gomez, editor of Diasporic Africa: A ReaderDuring its heyday in the nineteenth century, the African slave trade was fueled by the close relationship of the United States and Brazil. The Deepest South tells the disturbing story of how U.S. nationals - before and after Emancipation -- continued to actively participate in this odious commerce by creating diplomatic, social, and political ties with Brazil, which today has the largest population of African origin outside of Africa itself.Proslavery Americans began to accelerate their presence in Brazil in the 1830s, creating alliances there - sometimes friendly, often contentious - with Portuguese, Spanish, British, and other foreign slave traders to buy, sell, and transport African slaves, particularly from the eastern shores of that beleaguered continent. Spokesmen of the Slave South drew up ambitious plans to seize the Amazon and develop this region by deporting the enslaved African-Americans there to toil. When the South seceded from the Union, it received significant support from Brazil, which correctly assumed that a Confederate defeat wouldbe a mortal blow to slavery south of the border. After the Civil War, many Confederates, with slaves in tow

In the first half of the twentieth century, a charismatic Peruvian Amazonian indigenous chief, José Carlos Amaringo Chico, played a key role in leading his people, the Ashaninka, through the chaos generated by the collapse of the rubber economy in 1910 and the subsequent pressures of colonists, missionaries, and government officials to assimilate them into the national society. Slavery and Utopia reconstructs the life and political trajectory of this leader whom the people called Tasorentsi, the name the Ashaninka give to the world-transforming gods and divine emissaries that come to this earth to aid the Ashaninka in times of crisis. Fernando Santos-Granero follows Tasorentsi’s transformations as he evolved from being a debt-peon and quasi-slave to being a slave raider; inspirer of an Ashaninka movement against white-mestizo rubber extractors and slave traffickers; paramount chief of a multiethnic, anti-colonial, and anti-slavery uprising; and enthusiastic preacher of an indigenized version of Seventh-Day Adventist doctrine, whose world-transforming message and personal influence extended well beyond Peru’s frontiers. Drawing on an immense body of original materials ranging from archival documents and oral histories to musical recordings and visual works, Santos-Granero presents an in-depth analysis of chief Tasorentsi’s political discourse and actions. He demonstrates that, despite Tasorentsi’s constant self-reinventions, the chief never forsook his millenarian beliefs, anti-slavery discourse, or efforts to liberate his people from white-mestizo oppression. Slavery and Utopia thus convincingly refutes those who claim that the Ashaninka proclivity to messianism is an anthropological invention.

The captain hurled the torn panties to the floor and pushed her to the bed. 'Don't you ever learn?' He muttered, glaring angrily at her. She smiled coyly and looked up at him. 'What are you going to do about it? she asked. His hand reached for the cane and he held it about her. Stranded alone and penniless in the heart of the Amazon basin, Emily thinks things can't get any worse. It is only when she meets the captain of the Amazon Maiden that her dark journey truly begins. The captain expects only one thing from his crew: absolute obedience. Insubordination is not tolerated; punishment is delivered swiftly and mericlessly. Captivated by the beautiful Emily and her arrogant defiance, the captain is determined to enjoy her submission. Trapped on board the boat, Emily is forced to submit to the captain's every carnal desire. Throughout the journey she learns the true meaning of servility and the true pleasure of subjugation. Aware that she in enjoying this discipline, the captain uses all techniques available to break her indomitable spirit. But beneath her mask of servitude, Emily is plotting revenge.

From Africa to Brazil traces the flows of enslaved Africans from the broad region of Africa called Upper Guinea to Amazonia, Brazil. These two regions, though separated by an ocean, were made one by a slave route. Walter Hawthorne considers why planters in Amazonia wanted African slaves, why and how those sent to Amazonia were enslaved, and what their Middle Passage experience was like. The book is also concerned with how Africans in diaspora shaped labor regimes, determined the nature of their family lives, and crafted religious beliefs that were similar to those they had known before enslavement. It presents the only book-length examination of African slavery in Amazonia and identifies with precision the locations in Africa from where members of a large diaspora in the Americas hailed. From Africa to Brazil also proposes new directions for scholarship focused on how immigrant groups created new or recreated old cultures.

After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, Hugh Thomas describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time, but to answer controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated.

Presenting fascinating information about one of the largest rivers in the world, this guide also contains insight on the countries through which it flows. Readers will discover more about the first Amazonians and the European conquest. They will also find out about the people and wildlife that live in the rainforest along its banks, and learn more about the threats to their way of life and to the rainforest itself.