The Feeding of Slave Population in the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil: Some Remarks in the State of the Art

Abstract

This article examines the state of the art on the issue of slave feeding in the three largest slave societies of the Americas: The United States, the Caribbean and Brazil. Through a comparative analysis, the paper shows the evolution of the lines of research and methodological approaches on the topic, paying special attention to the problems that historians face at working with disparate sources in pursuit of reconstructing the captives’ diet. Finally, we discuss the parameters to measure the appropriate level of nutrient intake based on the slaves’ physical constitution.