By João José Reis (Author). Arthur Brakel (Translator). Slave Rebellion in Brazil is, in sum, a superb example of the very best recent Brazilian scholarship on slavery. Uniting careful research with a sophisticated treatment of issues related to race, ethnicity, religion, class, and collective action, it deserves attention not only among scholars interested in New World slavery, but also from an even wider audience. The Muslim slave uprising in Bahia in 1835, though unsuccessful in winning freedom for the rebels, had national repercussions, making it the most important urban slave rebellion in the Americas and the only one in which Islam played a major role. Joao Jose Reis draws on hundreds of police and trial records in which Africans, despite obvious intimidation, spoke out about their cultural, social, economic, religious, and domestic lives in Salvador. The Johns Hopkins University Press (1995), Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture, English, Paperback: 281 pages.

"In the course of explaining the causes and context of the uprising, Reis provides a fascinating social history of urban life and the African community in a city that was (and is) one of the most important centers of African culture in the Americas." — American Historical Review