Robinson Crusoe in the South Atlantic

Abstract

This article explores the Brazilian episode in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). It argues that this episode not only plays a pivotal role in the novel’s plot, as it ends up in disaster and Crusoe’s shipwreck, but also has historical significance once it offers a glimpse of the transnational and transcontinental nature of the slave trade in the South Atlantic, involving Portugal, England and Brazil.