Slavery - Volume II - by Laurentino Gomes

Between 1700 and 1800, around two million men and women were torn from their African roots, forcibly loaded into the holds of slave ships and transported to Brazil. Many would be sold at public auctions before heading to slave quarters where, under threat of the whip, they would work for the rest of their lives. At the end of the 18th century, Portuguese America had the highest concentration of people of African origin in the entire American continent.

In the second volume of Slavery - From the gold rush in Minas Gerais to the arrival of Dom João's court in Brazil, Laurentino Gomes focuses on the 18th century. The period represented the height of the slave trade in the Atlantic, motivated by the discovery of gold and diamond mines in the country and the spread, in other regions of America, of the cultivation of sugar cane, rice, tobacco, cotton and other crops marked due to the intensive use of captive labor.

No other issue is as important and as defining of our national identity as slavery. Knowing it helps explain what we were in the past, what we are today and also what we will be from now on. In an impactful text that includes images and graphics, Laurentino Gomes launches the second volume of his work, the result of 6 years of research, which included traveling across 12 countries and 3 continents.