Book, Trato dos viventes, O: formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic[LS]

Alencastro demonstrates that Portuguese colonization created an economic and social space consisting of a slave production zone, on the American coast, and a slave reproduction zone, centered in Angola. This bipolar system still deeply marks contemporary Brazil. Father Antônio Vieira wrote: "Angola... whose sad blood, black and unhappy souls nourishes, animates, sustains, serves and preserves Brazil." In The Tract of the Living, historian Luiz Felipe de Alencastro shows that Portuguese colonization, based on slavery, gave way to a bipolar economic and social space, encompassing a zone of slave production located on the coast of South America and a zone of reproduction of slaves centered in Angola. An aterritorial space then emerges, a Portuguese-speaking archipelago composed of the enclaves of Portuguese America and the trading posts of Angola. The author shows how these two parts united by the ocean are completed in a single system of colonial exploitation whose singularity still deeply marks contemporary Brazil. Colonial Brazil has been studied in the same way that the moon was observed before space flights: from the side that reflects the sun, from the side of Portugal, from Europe. The treatment of the living incorporates the events that took place in Angola into the narrative of Brazilian events - it is like discovering the hidden side of the moon, the hidden half of Brazil's history.