After Palmares: Diaspora, Inheritance, and the Afterlives of Zumbi

by Marc A Hertzman

Overview

In After Palmares, Marc A. Hertzman tells the rise, fall, and afterlives of Palmares, one of history’s largest and longest-lasting maroon societies. Forged during the seventeenth century by formerly enslaved Africans in what would become northeast Brazil, Palmares stood for a century, withstanding sustained attacks from two European powers. In 1695, colonial forces assassinated its most famous leader, Zumbi. Hertzman examines the remarkable ways that Palmares and its inhabitants lived on after Zumbi’s death, creating vivid portraits of those whose lives and voices scholars have often assumed are inaccessible. With an innovative approach to African languages, and paying close attention to place as well as African and diasporic spiritual beliefs, Hertzman reshapes our understanding of Palmares and Zumbi and advances a new framework for studying fugitive slave communities and marronage in the African diaspora.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478059547
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	08/16/2024
Series:	Radical Perspectives
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	29 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Marc A. Hertzman is Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and author of Making Samba: A New History of Race and Music in Brazil, also published by Duke University Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  xi
A Note on Language  xvii
Chronology  xxiii
Introduction. Layered Diasporas  1
I. War and Conquest
1. March 21, 1645  23
2. Before He Died, I Killed Zumbi  54
II. Spirits
3. Whose Confusion?  83
4. Flying Home?  107
III. People
5. Pedro, Paula, and the Refugees  129
6. The Powerful and the Almost Powerful  151
7. The “Indians of Palmares”  168
IV. Places
8. Greater Palmares  191
9. Farther North  214
V. Deaths and Rebirths
10. Killing Zumbi (Again)  239
11. Connected and Beyond  261
Conclusion. Tapera dos Palmares  280
Appendix A. A Latin Americanist Introduction to Africanist Comparative Historical Linguistics  299
Appendix B. Supplemental List of Sources  307
Notes  313
Bibliography  379
Index  435

Editorial Reviews

After Palmares is a beautifully written and stunning work of historical scholarship. With its publication, Marc A. Hertzman will widely be recognized as one of the most important and original scholars working on Brazil and the African diaspora.

The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil - Barbara Weinstein Barbara Weinstein

In a genius move, Marc A. Hertzman takes the notion of a maroon settlement and asks what changes when we think about such places as starting points rather than endpoints in histories of the enslaved. This conceptualization of the significance of marronage reshapes the field by demanding that we understand fugitivity to exist in the afterlives of violent histories but also serve as generative of powerful forms of well-being and community.

Kathryn M. de Luna

After Palmares is a beautifully crafted and breathtaking history of the long afterlives of the legendary runaway slave community. With the rhythm of an analytical epic, Marc A. Hertzman reckons with what he brilliantly calls the inheritances and trajectories of the post-Palmares world that came to be after its defeat in 1695. This tremendous book is interdisciplinary work at its finest.

Freedom’s Captives: Slavery and Gradual Emancipation on the Colombian Black Pacific - Yesenia Barragan

After Palmares is a beautifully written and stunning work of historical scholarship. With its publication, Marc A. Hertzman will widely be recognized as one of the most important and original scholars working on Brazil and the African diaspora.

The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil - Barbara Weinstein