Refuge In Thunder

The Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble has long been recognized as an extraordinary resource of African tradition, values, and identity among its adherents in Bahia, Brazil. Outlawed and persecuted in the late colonial and imperial period, Candomble nevertheless developed as one of the major religious expressions of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. Drawing principally on primary sources, such as police archives, Rachel E. Harding describes the development of the religion as an ""alternative"" space in which subjugated and enslaved blacks could gain a sense of individual and collective identity in opposition to the subaltern status imposed upon them by the dominant society.

""[An important] detailing of the development and evolution of a major institution of the African Diaspora [and] of Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian identity.""

Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-245) and index.

Slavery, Africanos Libertos, and the question of Black presence in nineteenth-century Brazil -- Salvador: the urban environment -- The Bolsa de Mandinga and Calundu: Afro-Brazilian religion as fetish and Feitiðcaria -- "Dis continuity," context, and documentation: origins and interpretations of the religion -- The nineteenth-century development of Candomblâe -- Healing and cultivating Axâe: profiles of Candomblâe leaders and communities -- Networks of support, spaces of resistance: alternative orientations of Black life in nineteenth-century Bahia -- Candomblâe as Feitiðco: reterritorialization, embodiment, and the alchemy of history in an Afro-Brazilian religion -- Coda: abolition, freedom, and Candomblâe as alternative Cidadania in Brazil.