Slavery in Brazil: Brazilian Scholars in the Key Interpretive Debates1
Translating the Americas Volume 1, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/lacs.12338892.0001.002 Slavery in Brazil: Brazilian Scholars in the Key Interpretive Debates1 Jean M. Hébrard Center for Research on Colonial and Contemporary Brazil, EHESS Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, University of Michigan Jean Hébrard, “L’esclavage au Brésil : le débat historiographique et ses racines,” in: Brésil : quatre siècles d’esclavage. Nouvelles questions, nouvelles recherches, ed. Jean Hébrard (Paris: Karthala & CIRESC, 2012): 7–61. Translated by Thomas Scott-Railton Among the countries where colonial slavery existed, present-day Brazil has un- doubtedly produced the richest and most abundant research into this terrible part of its history.2 But due to linguistic barriers, this decisive contribution to the understanding, and therefore the memory, of the institution of slavery is little known outside Brazil’s borders. Nonetheless, Brazilian research on the history of slavery has been in continual dialogue with North American schol- 1. Translated from the French by Thomas Scott Railton. I would especially like to thank Silvia Hunold Lara and Sidney Chalhoub, with whom I drafted the first outlines of this historio- graphical paper. It also owes a great deal to numerous discussions that I had with João José Reis, Robert W. Slenes, Hebe M. Mattos, Keila Grinberg, Marcus Carvalho, and Mariza de Carvalho Soares. All of my thanks to my translator, Thomas Scott- Railton, to my copyeditor Terre Fisher, to Keila Grinberg, Hebe Mattos, and Silvia Lara, for their attentive reading and feedback on earlier drafts, and to Rebecca J. Scott for her advice on the final text.
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