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activities and objects: the conservation and restoration of historical sites, the construction of new monuments and memorials, and the organization of commemorative activities aimed at remembering past events and attracting tourists. Moreover, in societies in which the state is not able to financially support cultural institutions, private and individual initiatives aimed at promoting an appreciation of heritage dominate. Heritage thus becomes just another commodity that brings financial profit or some kind of political or social reward.
The public memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade—the way the slave past is presented in the public sphere—is plural and is conveyed by the descendents of those who were imprisoned, deported, or suffered physical punishments. Social actors who captured people and actively participated in the Atlantic slave trade are also heirs to this past. The multiple public memories of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade conveyed by different groups in Europe, Africa, and the Americas can sometimes coincide, but in several cases they are quite different and conflictual. Indeed, within a group the existence of various memories related to an event, experience, or period can give rise to three different kinds of situations. In the first case, groups of individuals within a larger group have conflicting, opposing memories about a past traumatic event or experience, and the winning memory is that of the group having the strongest political power. In the second case, the traumatic experience involving two or more groups is forgotten, hidden, or denied. Slowly, the memory of an event becomes a kind of taboo, a forbidden subject. In the third case, the groups involved try to achieve an agreement by which the victims can exteriorize, rework, and transform their traumatic past experience. Such process can involve public apologies from the perpetrators and their descendants and can lead to forgiveness, reconciliation, and several forms of reparations. In this context, as Ron Eyerman explained, trauma is a “reflective process [that] links past to present through representation and imagination.”28 This book examines how larger and smaller groups directly or indirectly involved in the Atlantic slave trade between Brazil and the former Kingdom of Dahomey kept in silence or exteriorized—very often with the help of