Carrying a Sedan Chair (Palanquin), Bahia, Brazil, 1826
Description
Urban scene in Bahia, showing servants/slaves carrying a white woman. The Brazilian scholar, Gilberto Freyre writes: Within their hammocks and palanquins the gentry permitted themselves to be carried about by Negroes for whole days at a time, some of them travelling in this manner from one plantation to another, while others employed this mode of transport in the streets; when acquaintenances met, it was the custom to draw up alongside one another and hold a conversation (The Masters and the Slaves [New York, 1956], pp. 409-410).
Source
Alcide Dessalines d'Orbigny, Voyage pittoresque dans les deux Amèriques...(Paris, 1836), facing p. 150, fig. 3. (Copy in Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library)
Language
French
Rights
Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.
Identifier
NW0317
Spatial Coverage
South America--Brazil--Bahia
Item sets
Citation
"Carrying a Sedan Chair (Palanquin), Bahia, Brazil, 1826", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed January 23, 2021, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/486