Palmares: The Only African Kingdom That Thrived In The Americas

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Palmares: The Only African Kingdom That Thrived In The Americas

Black History , Brazil

Brunno Braga • Aug 31, 2021

In Brazil, Palmares is one of the most respected historic sites among the Afro-Brazilian community. The famous kingdom was the largest enslaved runaway community in the history of the Atlantic world.

It was the first and only African kingdom in the Americas— which lasted 100 years— and it is now a remarkable historic symbol for the African Diaspora. 

“Palmares was quite ethnically homogeneous, most of its people coming from Angola. After considerable growth during the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco (1630-1654), a Portuguese colonial settlement back then, Palmares started to be shaped as a state, with leadership and social stratification,”  said John K. Thornton, professor of history at Boston University and author of many books on the African Diaspora and African History. 

This African kingdom was created in the early 1600s, when slaves fleeing the sugar mills of Pernambuco, crossed the mountainous region now called Serra da Barriga— to form their own communities. Soon, they built villages called mocambos, which means refugee camp in  kimbundu, a Bantu idiom.

From 1602, the Portuguese governor Diogo Botelho organized expeditions in the region, called “Palmares” by its inhabitants due to the numerous palm trees.