The People of the River

Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835-1945
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4696-4324-3
Verlag: The University of North Carolina Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 419 g

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. Drawing on social and environmental history, he connects the Amazonians intimately to their natural landscapes. Relying on the natural 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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

de la Torre, Oscar

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umwelttechnik
• Technische Wissenschaften Umwelttechnik | Umwelttechnologie Umwelttechnik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen

Über Autor(innen)

Oscar de la Torre is assistant professor of history and Africana and Latin American studies at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.