Book, Flux and Reflux: the slave trade between the Gulf of Benin and[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. A great reference for the studies of Atlantic trafficking that gained strength in the 1980s, Fluxo e reflux is now being published in a new edition by Companhia das Letras, with an unpublished afterword by João José Reis. Flux and reflux is the result of almost twenty years of research by Pierre Verger. The detailed and insightful study was presented for the first time at the Sorbonne, in 1966, as the French anthropologist and ethnologist's doctoral thesis. Released in Brazil only in 1987, the work quickly became a historiographical landmark: based on surveys carried out on the coast of Africa and letters from the slave trader José Francisco dos Santos, known as Alfaiate, Verger reconstructs the route of buying and selling slaves between Bahia and the Gulf of Benin during the period of Portuguese colonization, and recovers the cultural consequences of this commercial relationship. “Although these two communities practically lost contact from the beginning of the 20th century, their members became, in cultural terms, Africans from Brazil and Brazilians from Africa”, says Pierre Verger. Five decades after its release in France, Flow and Reflux proves to be indispensable for understanding the history of trafficking, slavery and the Atlantic.