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For many decades, it was believed that family relations among slaves were either non-existent or trivial, since slave quarters were places of random promiscuity. Jean-Baptiste Debret, in his famous Viagem histórica e pitoresca ao Brasil [A Historic and Picturesque Voyage to Brazil], wrote that “one female slave was normally provided for each four men” in the plantations.

Manolo Florentino e José Roberto Pinto de Góes break down these and other myths in their book 'Peace in the Slave Quarters: Slave Families and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Rio de Janeiro, c. 1790-c.1850'.

“Slave society did not think it was a crime to separate slave parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. But it was known that a significant aspect of slavery, in practice, was actually the intricate network of family connections, and neither masters nor slaves could even imagine that it could be otherwise,” the authors write.

Florentino and Góes make it clear that their book grew out of a phase of more recent historical knowledge, when the simple existence of family relationships can no longer be doubted. “It is important to call attention to one aspect which, over the past twenty years, has kept historians from a more complete understanding of slave families,” they observe. “Slave families were considered economically unfeasible.”