The deepest south : the United States, Brazil, and the African slave trade /

This fascinating study uses the tools and sources of diplomatic history to examine a sweep of national and international history far beyond the confines of diplomacy. The book's center is Horne's examination of how US politicians, diplomats, and intellectuals understood Brazil--positing this largely imagined nation as part of a bulwark for continued US slavery, or as a hapless giant ripe to surrender the Amazon to the more vigorous US. Drawing on business history and the lives of sailors and adventurers in addition to diplomatic correspondence, the discussions touch on relations between the US and Britain, the opinions of prominent African Americans, and the foreign policy of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Topics that Horne (Univ. of Houston) considers, often in a surprising fashion or in a later time period than expected, include colonization schemes for free US blacks targeting the Brazilian Amazon, Manifest Destiny as imagined below the equator, the flourishing illegal slave trade conducted under the US flag, and the role of northeastern US shipbuilding and whaling in that trade. The portrait makes for instructive history. For Horne, the slave trade, rather than slavery, was an explosive political issue much later in the 19th century than is normally understood. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries. J. M. Rosenthal Western Connecticut State University