Surviving Maroon State in Brazil

How would the Quilombo dos Palmares be able to delay or prevent for a time the Portuguese conquest of their territory in 1694?

Preventing its destruction is hard. Something of Palmares' size cannot be left standing by the Portuguese.

Delay? It's been a long while since I've read about Palmares, but I have the impression there was at least some infighting(for instance, Zumbi became leader by killing the previous one, Ganga Zumba). Maybe it influenced the endgame?
 
Perhaps if the Braganzas of Portugal failed in reclaiming their country's independence from Spain, and its colonial outposts in Brazil have to contend with the attempted seizures from the Dutch, would this detract attention from the Quilombo dos Palmares and buy them some time?
 
Perhaps if the Braganzas of Portugal failed in reclaiming their country's independence from Spain, and its colonial outposts in Brazil have to contend with the attempted seizures from the Dutch, would this detract attention from the Quilombo dos Palmares and buy them some time?
I think so, but utter destruction is inevitable.
 
Perhaps if the Braganzas of Portugal failed in reclaiming their country's independence from Spain, and its colonial outposts in Brazil have to contend with the attempted seizures from the Dutch, would this detract attention from the Quilombo dos Palmares and buy them some time?

The Dutch also made constant attacks against Palmares. The problem of it was exactly its size. Other "quilombos" survived because they were small and isolated. Palmares was big and located next to the productive areas of sugarcane. Their survival was a "bad example" to the slaves who worked in the area, and so no colonial power would simply accept their existence. Also, they had the habit of raiding nearby plantations (ironically enough many of these attacks were made in order to capture slaves for their own lands) and it didn't help in building a "coexistence" with the white landowners.
 
Former runaway slaves would raid plantations for slaves of their own? Not, I think, would they have had qualms with the institution itself, but if they were raiding to support their own communities in the remote wilderness, I thought they would rather have persuaded the plantation slaves to flee with them, or was there an underlying tribal animosity between the African slaves?
 
Former runaway slaves would raid plantations for slaves of their own? Not, I think, would they have had qualms with the institution itself, but if they were raiding to support their own communities in the remote wilderness, I thought they would rather have persuaded the plantation slaves to flee with them, or was there an underlying tribal animosity between the African slaves?

Since the 1970's new books were published bringing new material about this subject. They indicate that the "kings of Palmares" had slaves that belonged to them. Later when I arrive home I can give you the names of the researchers, but at least one of claim that Zumbi and his ruling dynasty (as his uncle Ganga Zumba) descended from princely chiefs of West Africa (or believed so) and they actually tried to emulate the life style of their ancestors in Palmares, including having slaves.
 
I confess that I had a pretty far-fetched idea that an enduring Palmares confederation, in the absence of a colonial power to knock them back down, would come to include a stretch of coastline with harbours.

The Maroons have no maritime capacity as such, but Palmares did include a number of poor White Portuguese, being either deserters or criminals. Such a coastal region, I thought, would be a base of operations for piracy.

Even more far-fetched, was the idea that a ruler like Ganga Zumba, with pretensions of kingship, would actually send a group of his followers by ship to establish contact with the Kingdom of the Kongo.

But then, what could he do have such rapport with renegade European pirates to actually consider having them ferry people on his behalf to west Africa, or why would he even be interested in seeking relations to a remote state on the other side of the ocean that is itself militarily incapable of rendering any sort of aid?

Even if the the long-term survival of the Quilombo dos Palmares was possible at the time, there doesn't seem to be any plausible reason for them to be seeking foreign relations with anyone, other than the colonial powers that could crush the at any time.
 
There's a TL on this very board where a massive Quilombo (sp?) drives the Portuguese out entirely and basically becomes a "black Brazil."

I thought it was kind of cool, even though I cannot remember much about it.
 
If it - BIG IF - survives, an ATL Candomblé (brazilian 'voudou') may be different - closer to african-yoruba believes maybe, and stronger.
 
There's a TL on this very board where a massive Quilombo (sp?) drives the Portuguese out entirely and basically becomes a "black Brazil."

I thought it was kind of cool, even though I cannot remember much about it.
Brazil is just too valuable to be left alone. If the Portuguese are expelled the French or Dutch will eventually come.
 
Since the 1970's new books were published bringing new material about this subject. They indicate that the "kings of Palmares" had slaves that belonged to them. Later when I arrive home I can give you the names of the researchers, but at least one of claim that Zumbi and his ruling dynasty (as his uncle Ganga Zumba) descended from princely chiefs of West Africa (or believed so) and they actually tried to emulate the life style of their ancestors in Palmares, including having slaves.

Could they have been coopted by the Portuguese or Dutch and survived that way? This is what ended up happening to the maroons in British Jamaica.
 
Could they have been coopted by the Portuguese or Dutch and survived that way? This is what ended up happening to the maroons in British Jamaica.

In 1678 Ganga Zumba signed a peace treaty with the governor of Pernambuco. The document stated that Portugal wouldn't threat the quilombolas anymore as long as they stopped to raid the Portuguese plantations and moved their location from Palmares to a more isolated area (the Cucaú Valley).
Of course, the treaty didn't stand. There was a division of the Quilombolas, and Ganga Zumba was killed by orders of his nephew Zumbi, who became the ruler of Palmares, rejected the treaty and continued the conflict with the Portuguese.
Maybe if Ganga Zumba had imposed his will then a smaller Palmares could have survived, altough they would need a lot of luck in order to have the Portuguese actually respecting the treaty.
 
Regarding the presence of slaves in Palmares, in the book "O Quilombo dos Palmares", by Edison Carneiro, the author quotes a captain of the Dutch WIC - Johan Blaer - that fought in Palmares and described the Maroon society there. He declared that while slaves that escaped to Palmares by their own were free, those captured in raids against the white plantation were kept in slavery. If they tried to escape from their new masters in Palmares, they would be hunted and killed.
 
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