Public memory of slavery: victims and perpetrators in the South Atlantic

After decades of research and debates on the history of slavery and the slave trade and on the cultural links between Africa and the Americas, and fruitful theoretical developments on memory, remembrance, the invention of traditions, and public history, the time was ripe for a discussion on the public memory of slavery. Ana Lucia Araujo, Associate Professor of History at Howard University, chose Brazil and Benin to demonstrate the potential of the topic. The theme is developed in broad terms and in long descriptive sections. The first chapter is dedicated to an overview of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Americas. However, the ambition to cover such complex and frequently renovated fields resulted in simplification and failure to connect to the theme of the book. The second chapter deals with the emergence of memory of the slave trade and slavery by surveying the intellectual and social movements against racism and the initiatives to memorialize the past in the twentieth century. Some commonplace statements are mixed in with interesting insights. The discussion of the use of Gorée island as a “lieu de mémoire” explores quite well the contradiction between its relative insignificance during the slave trade and the attention it receives now. One complex question is missed: why did communist regimes in Africa choose to ignore race and slavery in their otherwise elaborate public memory construction? At this point, readers will realize that the questions driving the book emerge largely from the Anglophone debate on race and fail to take into account local—Beninese, Brazilian—perspectives that would render the discussion more complex and authentic. The third chapter surveys the historical links between the Gulf of Benin and Bahia using largely secondary sources. The result is uneven, heavy on descriptions, and light on interpretation. Little space is devoted to the migration of freedpersons back to Africa, a subject that is central to the connection between the two regions under study. In the fourth chapter the theme of public memory takes center stage. Araujo focuses on the memorialization of slavery and the slave trade in Benin in the 1990s by recounting the local efforts to create events and spaces that could appeal to individuals from the diaspora and thus benefit