Istwa Nou

Rio de Janeiro was the largest destination for seaborne slaving anywhere in the world, and until 1839 nearly every African brought into southeast Brazil came ashore there. It was also the second busiest place on earth for organising slaving voyages. Ships owned by Rio merchants ran direct to Luanda or Benguela on the Angolan coast and came straight back, a shuttle rather than a triangle. In the nineteenth century a second supply opened. Coffee planting spread through the hills behind the city and wanted more people than West Central Africa was delivering, so vessels began rounding the Cape to load in southeast Africa. The shape of the city follows from all this. Its wharves, warehouses, markets and credit were built around receiving and reselling human beings, and its population was assembled the same way. A port that owns the ships as well as the landing stage controls both ends of the transaction, and Rio set the terms for the whole of southeastern Brazil through the plantation century.