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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.
List 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
About the author
Marc A. Hertzman
Summary
Marc A. Hertzman tells the rise, fall, and afterlives of Palmares, one of history’s largest and longest-lasting maroon societies which existed during the seventeenth century in what would become northeast Brazil.
