ATLANTIC SLAVERY AND THE ETHICS OF CARTOGRAPHY: BRAZIL, SEPTEMBER 1763
Matthew Rarey, Associate Professor of African and Black Atlantic Art History at Oberlin College, looks at a unique work of Black Atlantic visual culture: the map of Buraco do Tatú, a quilombo (primarily African-populated maroon polity) invaded and destroyed on the orders of the Viceroy of Brazil in September of 1763. Produced by a military cartographer immediately after the battle and today held at an archive in Lisbon, it is one of only two extant maps of the hundreds of such polities that existed in Brazil during its slavery period and by far the most detailed.