The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-1848; & Amazon Frontier: the Defeat of the Brazilian Indians

• The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-1848
  Robin Blackburn - Verso, 1988- 560pp
• Amazon Frontier: the Defeat of the Brazilian Indians
  John Hemming - Macmillan, 1987- 657pp

These two books make a substantial contribution to the study of the relationship between non-European peoples and peoples of European descent in the Americas. The volume by John Hemming, the Director of the Royal Geographical Society, examines at considerable length the conflicts of Brazilians on the Amazon frontier between the mid-eighteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. The new book follows up the author's earlier volume, Red Gold. The book by Robin Blackburn, editor of the New Left Review, is the first of two in which the author investigates the nature of relationships between capitalist development in the metropolis and peripheries and explores the ways in which capitalist change, metropolitan abolitionism and slave resistance combined to demolish one of the most durable institutions in the western hemisphere.