Punishment in Paradise : Race, Slavery, Human Rights, and a Nineteenth-Century Brazilian Penal Colony

Throughout the nineteenth century the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha, which lies two hundred miles off Brazil's northeastern coast, was home to Brazil's largest forced labor penal colony. In Punishment in Paradise Peter M. Beattie uses Noronha as a case study to understand nineteenth-century Brazil's varied social and cultural values, especially in relation to justice, class, color, civil condition, human rights and labor. As Brazil's slave population declined after 1850, the use of colonial-era disciplinary practices at Noronha--such as flogging and forced labor--stoked anxieties about human rights and Brazil's international image. Beattie contends that the treatment of slaves, convicts, and other social categories subject to coercive labor extraction were interconnected and that reforms that benefitted one of these categories made them harder to deny to others. In detailing Noronha's history and the end of slavery as part of an international expansion of human rights, Beattie places Brazil firmly in the purview of Atlantic history Contents 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction: Fernando de Noronha Island: Foil, Paradox, Paradise, or Inferno? 16 1. Getting to Know “Fernando” 27 2. “The Key to the Americas”? 38 3. Fernando de Noronha’s “Dark Twins”: Licit and Illicit Commerce 63 4. “Brothers of the Peak”: Prosopography of a Penal Community 90 5. The Jealous Institution and Brazilian Penology 116 6. “A Stench in the Nostrils of God”? The Material and Social Life of Exile 139 7. Crime, Conflict, Corruption, and Cooperation on an Atlantic Frontier 163 8. The Treatment and Categorization of Slave Convicts in a Penal Archipelago 192 9. Of Captivity and Incarceration: Human Rights Reformin Atlantic Perspective 215 Conclusion: Punishment in Paradise Foiled Again 242 Appendix: Statistical Tables 274 Abbreviations 274 Notes 278 Bibliography 316 Index 342 Fernando de Noronha Island: foil, paradox, paradise, or inferno? -- Getting to know "Fernando" -- "The key to the Americas?" -- Fernando de Noronha's "dark twins": licit and illicit commerce -- "Brothers of the peak": prosopography of a penal community -- The jealous institution and Brazilian penology -- "A stench in the nostrils of god?". The material and social life of exile -- Crime, conflict, corruption, and cooperation on an Atlantic frontier -- The treatment and categorization of slave convicts in a penal archipelago -- Of captivity and incarceration: human rights reform in Atlantic perspective -- Punishment in paradise foiled again "Peter M. Beattie provides a detailed examination of the nineteenth-century Brazilian island penal colony Fernando de Noronha, in which he shows how it serves as a metaphor for Brazilian society and was key to Brazil's abolishment of slavery"--OCLC