In this ambitious work, Marcus J. M. de Carvalho examines the changing meanings of slavery and freedom in a major city in northeastern Brazil. The contexts of the long-term decline of the sugar economy, the imminent closure of the African slave trade, the political struggles of the early nineteenth century, and rising opposition to slavery itself make Recife a fascinating setting for a study of slave resistance. Recife’s contaminated water supply allowed some urban slaves a freedom of movement unusual even by the standards of other Atlantic ports. Slave canoemen constantly traveled outside the city for fresh water, exchanging news and rumors from the countryside with the domestic slaves and sailors who awaited their return. In their varied movements and occupations, wage-earning negros de ganho and enslaved marketwomen developed extensive skills and social contacts through which they sometimes acquired freedom. Other slaves took advantage of the northeast’s continual political upheaval...

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