6 - Landscapes, Religions, Transitions

Summary

This chapter examines probate inventories and other primary documents to chart the integration of Bahia’s dendê economy within the post-abolition transitions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It reconstructs four socioecological processes fundamental in that synthesis: the expansion of dendê cultures and landscapes in and around nineteenth-century Salvador; the interactive emergence of transatlantic economies, landscapes, and religions on the bay island of Itaparica; the persistent proliferation of dendê landscapes despite official disregard and illegibility; and the complementary intensification of dendê and cacao production on the post-abolition Southern Coast. This chapter demonstrates how networks of people, plants, places, and power interacted across time and space to assemble and reproduce a transatlantic dendê economy combining nourishment, ecology, and spirituality.