312 /. Michael Turnerresearched and analysed. Of importance also is the fact that these themes often
have a direct as well as indirect bearing on certain foreign policy strategy that
is currently under consideration by governments, thereby not being relegated
to forgotten library shelves or local archives. The contemporaneousness of
African-Brazilian studies should also be considered a point of interest and
emphasis.
Salvador, Bahia serves as a point of departure for any study concerned
with African-Brazilian cultural and historical connections. Bahia because of
its economic importance during the era of the Atlantic slave trade received
large numbers of African slaves, who in coming to Brazil brought not only
their ability to work in the sugar-cane fields, but also their varied African
cultures and personalities. These cultural traits were representative of different
ethnic groups from Senegal to the Cameroons, and also from Angola and
Mozambique, all mixing racially and socially with Portuguese and Amerindian
cultures with the result being the cultural heterogeneity which is today's almost
mythic Bahia, a region considered both by its native Bahians and the rest of
Brazil as an area apart and culturally special from the rest of the country.^1
Research on Afro-Brazilian culture, as manifested in the various cults and
sects of Afro-Brazilian religion has tended to focus upon the city of Salvador
and to a lesser extent upon the interior of the stade of Bahia. The literal 'centre'
for research in Bahia concerning African influence in Brazil is the Centro de
Estudos Afro-Orientais, CEAO, semi-independent from the Federal University
of Bahia. Founded in 1959,^2 the centre was the first institute in Brazil to be
concerned with Africa and African studies. Being situated in Salvador, quite
logically it concentrated its research interests on the city and the constellation
of African retentions in that particular urban environment. Its library facilities
during the 1960s represented the most comprehensive collection of books and
periodicals concerning Africa to be found within Brazil. As many of the first
research fellows of the centre were trained ethnologists and anthropologists
the library tended to mirror these interests, ethno-cultural studies being more
numerous than political and economic monographs. Important as the centre's
organ of diffusion and medium of information expression within Brazil of the
international research concerning Africa is its journal, Afro-Asia. This remains
the sole Brazilian-African studies journal.^3 Despite a series of economic vicis-
situdes the CEAO and its journal have continued with pioneering work, while
having to deal with the problems of having been the first in the field.
For researchers in Bahia who wanted to concern themselves with African
influence within Brazilian, perhaps more specifically Bahian, culture the centre
proved an invaluable agent. But if the research was of a more general nature
concerning Afro-Brazilian history or a more global project concerning the
African continent the research facilities of CEAO by 1970 were seen to be
increasingly inadequate, as for reasons of financial exigency the latest publica-