Theorists and observers of transnationalism, or globalization, tend to regard the phenomenon as new and as antagonistic to the territorial nation. This essay seeks to establish the historical and transnational nature of one famous but little-understood African "nation" in Brazil and to show that such transnational black identities have evolved in a mutually transformative dialogue with the territorial nation. Therefore, far from prefiguring the demise of the territorial nation, these and other such transnational phenomena have been critical to the very construction of the American territorial nation.