Book ID: CBB716355605

The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835–1945 (2018)

unapi

In this history of the black peasants of Amazonia, Oscar de la Torre focuses on the experience of African-descended people navigating the transition from slavery to freedom. He draws on social and environmental history to connect them intimately to the natural landscape and to Indigenous peoples. Relying on this world as a repository for traditions, discourses, and strategies that they retrieved especially in moments of conflict, Afro-Brazilians fought for autonomous communities and developed a vibrant ethnic identity that supported their struggles over labor, land, and citizenship.Prior to abolition, enslaved and escaped blacks found in the tropical forest a source for tools, weapons, and trade--but it was also a cultural storehouse within which they shaped their stories and records of confrontations with slaveowners and state authorities. After abolition, the black peasants' knowledge of local environments continued to be key to their aspirations, allowing them to maintain relationships with powerful patrons and to participate in the protest cycle that led Getulio Vargas to the presidency of Brazil in 1930. In commonly referring to themselves by such names as "sons of the river," black Amazonians melded their agro-ecological traditions with their emergent identity as political stakeholders.

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Reviewed By

Review Mira Kohl (2019) Review of "The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835–1945". Agricultural History (pp. 547-548). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB716355605/

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Authors & Contributors
Finney, Carolyn
de la Torre, Oscar
Bonan, Giacomo
Jennifer Bonnell
Rafael Rogério Nascimento dos Santos
Spears, Ellen Griffith
Concepts
Environment
African Americans
African Americans and science
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Identity
Rivers
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, late
18th century
Places
Amazon River Region (South America)
United States
Brazil
Mississippi River (North America)
Danube river
Nile River
Institutions
Iowa State College, Ames
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