Abstract
This article analyzes the English botanist George Gardner's trip to Brazil during the 1830s. After graduating from the University of Glasgow Gardner was influenced by his teacher and by readings of contemporary naturalists and set off for Brazil in March of 1836, arriving two months later in Rio de Janeiro. The article presents Gardner's impressions of slavery in Brazil, in an attempt to unveil the symbolic universe of a play he witnessed and described, which took place on a farm in Rio de Janeiro on Christmas night. By describing black slavery in its routes across the Atlantic, we compare this event with other similar happenings in Brazil and in Trinidad and Tobago.
Keywords:
foreign travelers; slave culture; dramatic representation; Atlantic routes and communications; uprising
