A Waterborne Frontier: Survival, Mobility, and Power on the Hydroscapes of Colonial Brazil, 1750–1835

While myriad studies have illuminated African people’s adaptation to the landscapes of the Americas, few scholars have explored diasporic adaptation to and mastery of the aquatic environments of the New World. In Salvador da Bahia, one of the early modern Atlantic world’s largest port cities, enslaved and free residents pioneered strategies of mobility, survival and empowerment within the vibrant hydroscapes that comprised the waterborne “frontier” of the Portuguese colony. Located on the Bay of All Saints, Africans and their descendants residing in Salvador—both enslaved and free—experimented with and collected knowledge about their newfound aquatic environment, in the process gaining insights into local geography, currents and winds, discovering routes of navigation within the Bay, its tributaries, as well as the Atlantic littoral. Drawing on environmental expertise gleaned from the many rivers, lagoons, and estuaries that comprised the landscapes of their homelands, enslaved residents of colonial Brazil, developed numerous techniques for extracting valuable resources from these maritime environments. These aquatic provisioning grounds not only provided for their own subsistence, but also furnished enslaved people and the free poor with commodities to sell in local markets, thus allowing them access to the cash economy. As a 1775 census of Salvador noted, residents piloted the many “small ships, that navigate the rivers, and streams of this Captaincy” and supported “those that live and fish for their maintenance, like the Free sailors and Fishermen, and the slaves that are in every captaincy, [and] parish ... [and] reside at the water’s edge.” Paradoxically, the mobility of enslaved pilots of canoes, lighters and jangadas facilitated the expansion of a sugar and tobacco producing plantation complex in the region surrounding Salvador in the 18^th century, as bondsman’s maritime expertise enabled the movement of commodities to Atlantic markets and provisions to the slave plantations of the Bay.