The African Diaspora: Brazil and the United States

The African Diaspora was driven by slave trade that shattered old patterns of historical and social development in Africa and created, under significant duress, a complex array of new histories, new cultures, new societies and new racial/ethnic groups in the Americas. These new histories and societies were shaped by the interaction of several key factors: the nature of the colonial economy and the need for bound labor; the population of resident Europeans relative to that of enslaved Africans; the regions of Africa from which enslaved Africans were drawn; the survival rate of the Native Americans in a given region; and in some cases, the religion and other cultural peculiarities of the colonizing country. In each colony, the value of each variable was different-creating a host of complex social equations and a fascinating blend of similarities and differences across the racial landscape of the western hemisphere. My presentation will compare the African Diaspora to Brazil and the United States-and its legacy in both modern nations.