After Palmares

In <i>After Palmares</i> 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.