Palmares, or Quilombo dos Palmares, was a quilombo, a community of escaped slaves and others, in colonial Brazil that developed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694. It was located in the captaincy of Pernambuco, in what is today the Brazilian state of Alagoas. The quilombo was located in what is now the municipality of União dos Palmares.

Background

The modern tradition has been to call the community the Quilombo of Palmares. Quilombos were settlements mainly of maroons and free-born enslaved African people. The quilombos came into existence when Africans began arriving in Brazil in the mid-1530s and grew significantly as slavery expanded.

No contemporary document called Palmares a quilombo; instead the term mocambo was used. Palmares was home to not only escaped enslaved Africans, but also to Indigenous peoples, caboclos, and poor or marginalized Portuguese settlers, especially Portuguese soldiers trying to escape forced military service.

Overview

One estimate places the population of Palmares in the 1690s at around 20,000 inhabitants, although recent scholarship has questioned whether this figure is exaggerated. Stuart Schwartz places the number at roughly 11,000, noting that it was, regardless, "undoubtedly the largest fugitive community to have existed in Brazil". This government was confederate in nature, and was led by an elected chief who allocated landholdings, appointed officials (usually family members), and resided in a type of fortification called Macoco. Six Portuguese expeditions tried to conquer Palmares between 1680 and 1686, but failed. Finally the governor of the captaincy of Pernambuco, Pedro Almeida, organized an army under the leadership of the Bandeirantes Domingos Jorge Velho and Bernardo Vieira de Melo and defeated a palmarista force, putting an end to the republic in 1694.

Formative period (1620–53)

Palmares was the general name given by the Portuguese in Pernambuco and Alagoas to the interior districts beyond the settlements on the coast, especially the mountain ranges, because there were many palm trees there. As early as 1602, Portuguese settlers complained to the government that their captives were running away into this inaccessible region and building mocambos, or small communities. However, the Portuguese were unable to dislodge these communities, which were probably small and scattered, and so expeditions continued periodically into the interior.

During this time the vast majority of the enslaved Africans who were brought to Pernambuco were from Portuguese Angola, perhaps as many as 90%, and therefore it is no surprise that tradition, reported as early as 1671 related that its first founders were Angolan. This large number was primarily because the Portuguese used the colony of Angola as a major raiding base, and there was a close relationship between the holders of the contract of Angola, the governors of Angola, and the governors of Pernambuco.

In 1630 the Dutch West India Company sent a fleet to conquer Pernambuco, in the context of the Dutch-Portuguese War, during the period of the Iberian Union. Although they captured and held the city of Recife, they were unable (and generally unwilling) to conquer the rest of the province. As a result, there was a constant low-intensity war between Dutch and Portuguese settlers. During this time thousands of enslaved people escaped and went to the Palmares.

Although initially the Dutch considered making an alliance with Palmares against the Portuguese, peace agreements put them in the position of supporting the sugar plantation economy of Pernambuco. Consequently, the Dutch leader John Maurice of Nassau decided to send expeditions against Palmares. These expeditions also collected intelligence about them, and it is from these accounts that we learn about the organization of Palmares in their time.

By the 1640s, many of the mocambos had consolidated into larger entities ruled by kings. Dutch descriptions by Caspar Barlaeus (published 1647) and Johan Nieuhof (published 1682) spoke of two larger consolidated entities, "Great Palmares" and "Little Palmares". In each of these units there was a large central town that was fortified and held 5,000–6,000 people. The surrounding hills and valleys were filled with many more mocambos of 50 to 100 people. A description of the visit of Johan Blaer to one of the larger mocambos in 1645 (which had been abandoned) revealed that there were 220 buildings in the community, a church, four smithies, and a council house. Churches were common in Palmares partly because Angolans were frequently Christianized, either from the Portuguese colony or from the Kingdom of Kongo, which was a Christianized country at that time. Others had been converted to Christianity while enslaved. According to the Dutch, they used a local person who knew something of the church as a priest, though they did not think he practiced the religion in its usual form. Schwartz notes that African religious practices were also preserved and suggests that the depiction of Palmares as a largely Christian settlement is perhaps reflective of confusion or bias on the part of contemporary commentators.

Although the kingdom was destroyed the Palmares region continued to host many smaller runaway settlements, but there was no longer the centralized state in the mountains.

Fighting techniques

thumb|right|Capoeira or the Dance of War by [[Johann Moritz Rugendas (1825)]]

Although it is often argued that the inhabitants of Palmares defended themselves using the martial art form called capoeira, there is no documentary evidence that the residents of Palmares actually used this method of fighting. Most accounts describe them as armed with spears, bows, arrows and guns. They were able to acquire guns by trading with the Portuguese and by allowing small-holding cattle raisers to use their land. Guerrilla warfare was common; the inhabitants of Palmares, familiar with the terrain, marshaled camouflage and surprise attacks to their advantage. Fortifications of the Palmares encampments themselves included fences, walls, and traps.

Legacy

Quilombo dos Palmares Memorial Park

The Quilombo dos Palmares Memorial Park, created in 2007 in Serra da Barriga (AL) and listed by IPHAN in 1985, recreates in life-size the environment of the historic Republic of Palmares, the largest and longest-lasting quilombo in the Americas. The space features typical constructions such as flour and herb houses, indigenous huts and symbolic sites that preserve black culture, as well as audio in four languages narrating the history of the quilombo.

The only theme park in Brazil dedicated to black culture, it offers attractions such as viewpoints, Afro-Brazilian cuisine, and cultural performances. In 2023, it recorded a 14.18% increase in the number of visitors in the first half of the year, compared to the same period in 2022, reinforcing its relevance as a historical, cultural, and educational landmark.

  • Quilombo, a 1984 Brazilian film by Carlos Diegues, depicts a semi-fictional account of Palmares.
  • Palmares, a 2021 historic work of fiction by Gayl Jones, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
  • Angola Janga: Kingdom of Runaway Slaves, a graphic novel by Marcelo D'salete, was published by Fantagraphics in 2019.

See also

  • Atlantic slave trade
  • Creole
  • Dandara, female warrior and wife of Zumbi
  • Zumbi

Notes

Bibliography

  • Pita, Sebastião da Rocha, História da América Portuguesa, Ed. Itatiaia, 1976.
  • Edison Carneiro,O Quilombo dos Palmares (São Paulo, 1947, only edition with documentary appendix, and three subsequent editions).
  • Décio Freitas, Palmares: Guerra dos escravos (Rio de Janeiro, 1973 and five subsequent editions).
  • R. Kent, "Palmares: An African State in Brazil," Journal of African History.
  • R. Anderson, "The Quilombo of Palmares: A New Overview of a Maroon State in Seventeenth-Century Brazil," Journal of Latin American Studies 28, no. 3 (October 1996): 545–566.
  • Irene Diggs: "Zumbi and the Republic of Os Palmares". Phylon. 1953. Atlantic Clark University. Vol. 2 p. 62.
  • "Palmares", Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 24 October 2007.
  • Charles E. Chapman, The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 3, No. 1 (January 1918), pp. 29–32.
  • Vincent Bakpetu Thompson. Africans of the Diaspora: The Evolution of African Consciousness and Leadership in the Americas (From Slavery to the 1920s). Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000. pp. 39–44.
  • Glenn Alan Cheney, Quilombo dos Palmares: Brazil's Lost Nation of Fugitive Slaves, Hanover, CT:New London Librarium, 2014.