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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...