This is the first complete modern survey of the institution of slavery in Brazil and how it affected the lives of enslaved Africans.

Herbert S. Klein is Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, Professor of History, and senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford University, as well as Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. Klein is the author of some 20 books and 155 articles in several languages on Latin America and on comparative themes in social and economic history. Among these books are four comparative studies of slavery, the most recent of which are African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (co-author), The Atlantic Slave Trade, and Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo, 1750¿1850 (co-author). He has also published on such diverse themes as The American Finances of the Spanish Empire, 1680¿1809 and A Population History of the United States and is co-author of Brazil Since 1980 and Mexico Since 1980.

Part I. The Political Economy of Slave Labor: 1. Origins of African slavery in Brazil; 2. The establishment of African slavery in Brazil in the 16th & 17th century; 3. Slavery and the economy in the 18th century; 4. Slavery and the economy in the 19th century; 5. The economics of slavery; Part II. Brazilian Slave Society: 6. Life, death, and migration in Afro-Brazilian slave society; 7. Slave resistance and rebellion; 8. Family, kinship and community; 9. Freedmen in a slave society; Part III. End of Slavery: 10. Transition from slavery to freedom.