This book is an unusually successful scholarly achievement. Its author’s aim was to gain new understanding of the American racial problem by comparing American slavery and race relations with their counterparts in Brazil, but in the process of his investigation he has become an accomplished Brazilianist, and has cast much light on Brazilian questions.
The author’s facts will not surprise Brazilian specialists, since the parts of the study which bear on Brazil are based mostly upon recent historical and sociological literature, with little of relevance overlooked. What may surprise, however, is the way he uses this material and the bold conclusions he draws from it. In fact, the force of his arguments will help to make some heretofore controversial theories about Brazilian slavery and race relations more acceptable, though the author may also have provoked some controversies of his own. Concerning race relations, for example, he follows the lead of such Brazilian scholars as Florestan Fernandes and Octavio Ianni, showing beyond question that discrimination is a Brazilian as well as an American problem. Yet he also presents an intriguing new explanation for Brazil’s obviously milder race relations. The better Brazilian situation, he suggests, is partly the result of a “mulatto escape hatch,” a special place in society for the Brazilian mulatto which has no counterpart in the United States. This “escape hatch” is perhaps more a result than a cause of better race relations, but the theory is well worth further investigation.
Particularly significant is the contribution this book makes to the debate on slavery in the Americas, for the author has written a devastating critique of the Tannenbaum-Elkins thesis. Brazilian and American slavery were different, he admits, but Degler’s differences are rarely those which Frank Tannenbaum emphasized in Slave and Citizen. Like Tannenbaum and his followers, he believes that manumission was more common in Brazil, but in most other respects he sees Brazilian slavery as harsher than North American slavery. Family relationships were less stable in Brazil, suicides more frequent, and the prostitution of female slaves was more common. In Brazil, because of poor physical conditions and sex imbalances, slaves were not born as fast as they died, and Brazilian slavery therefore depended upon the African slave traffic long after the American south was being supplied almost solely by natural increase. Equally important, Degler has noticed the obvious gap between the protective laws of Brazil and Brazilian practices, between the theoretical protectiveness of the Catholic Church and the Church’s normal failure to interfere with slavery or even to assure the marriage of the Christian slave or the integrity of the Christian slave family. This will not be the last word on the debate over slavery in the Americas, but it is one of the most convincing statements written so far.