|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Half of South America
Brazil is not just another country in Latin America. Brazil is a unified Portuguese America that did not split in the wake of independence as Spanish America did. In both land area and population, Brazil is far and away the largest Latin American country, currently boasting the eighth-largest economy in the world. So Brazil contrasts in size, culture, and history to most Spanish American countries. Brazil began with a sugar plantation economy, which implied massive "forced immigration" from Africa to replace a vanishing indigenous workforce. Only Cuba is really comparable in Spanish America. Of course, the Portuguese language itself also sets Brazil apart from Spanish America. For linguistic reasons, Brazil has shared relatively little, culturally and intellectually, with Spanish American countries—little, at least, when compared with what Spanish Americans have shared with each other. Colonial Brazil was separated from colonial Spanish America by the vastness of the continent's interior spaces. Trade was limited. Their main meeting place was Brazil's southern flank, the Rio de la Plata basin, scene of repeated wars. Today, this region is the most integrated with Brazil economically (under the Mercosur free trade agreement), while overall, Brazil's long border with Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay remains sparsely populated. Physically separate, Brazilian and Spanish American societies have quite separate identities as well, in every thing from their political and intellectual traditions to their popular culture. For example, Brazilians and Spanish Americans, as a general rule, do not listen much to each others' music or read each other's authors, being far more attuned culturally to Europe or the United States.
Within Latin America, then, Brazil is something of a world apart. There is certainly a lot there to fascinate students. The biggest draw, no doubt, is the colonial capital and Afro-Brazilian cultural Mecca, Salvador (Bahia). Bahia lies on the "sugar coast," the original focus of Portuguese colonization, a region that Brazilians now call simply the Northeast. But the Northeast means two different things. It means the coast, where the sugar plantations left their bitter legacy of wealth mixed with poverty, as well as the rich cultural legacy on display in Salvador. But the Northeast is also the arid sertão that occupies a wide swath of the Brazilian interior, with its ranching economy and its periodic droughts so devastating as to send even the toughest backlanders fleeing to the coast. What the Northeast was in colonial Brazil the Southeast is today—the main hub of Brazilian economic life, location of its most developed cities and infrastructure, a magnet for immigrants for over a century. The far South, where immigration has been even more important, shares high indices of development. Except for the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's advanced military outpost since colonial days, the far South has been a "late-blooming" region in Brazilian national life. Even later-blooming have been the regions far from the coast, both the Amazonian North and the more arid West, where few Brazilians live to this day.
Topics:
Themes:
Questions for Analysis and Further Reflection:
- Can you explain how patterns of indigenous life in Brazil contrasted with those of Mexico or Peru? Why did the contrast have such far-reaching results?
- How does Brazil's monarchical experience in the nineteenth century contrast with the Spanish American experience?
- Why was Getúlio Vargas Brazil's most influential leader ever?
Country Bibliography: (Titles with ** are good starting places.)
** Burns, E. Bradford. A History of Brazil, 3rd ed. New York: Columbia University Press,
1993.
Written with the undergraduate reader in mind, with attention to cultural problems as well as political and economic ones. A useful "pictorial study" offers many photographs of Brazil's past and present, a glossary with Portuguese terms, and a complete index are provided. Burns also includes a bibliographic essay with a twist: he discusses Brazilian novels (translated into English) as a way to explore Brazil's history.
Fausto, Boris. A Concise History of Brazil. Translated by Arthur Brakel. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Fausto's history of Brazil is part of a new series that aims to make historical scholarship accessible to readers who are not specialists on the country at hand. A useful bibliographical narrative is included, as are a handful of plates and maps.
** Levine, Robert M. The History of Brazil. Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Few maps and no illustrations, but the historical timeline, key people section, bibliographical essay, and a glossary of Portuguese terms are helpful tools.
Meade, Teresa A. A Brief History of Brazil. New York: Facts On File, 2003.
An accessible, up-to-date, and balanced general history of Brazil. Useful appendices include a bibliography, basic facts, a timeline, and a suggested-readings list arranged according to major moments in Brazilian history. Illustrations and excerpts from primary and secondary sources complement the text.
Schneider, Ronald M. "Order and Progress": A Political History of Brazil. Boulder:
Westview Press, 1991.
For the student who seeks a detailed, scholarly political narrative. Notes provide the only bibliographical information in the book.
** Skidmore, Thomas E. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. Latin American Histories. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
A well-written survey of Brazilian history from the colonial era up to the end of the twentieth century. Though the primary focus falls on politics and economics, Skidmore maps out important social and cultural characteristics and developments of Brazil. Among these are questions of race and the institution of slavery, changing social hierarchies, and the evolution of ideologies in the twentieth century. Numerous statistical tables sum up points in the text, a bibliographical essay offers suggestions for further reading, and clear maps give the reader a geographical picture of Brazil.
Smith, Joseph, and Francisco Vinhosa. History of Brazil, 1500-2000: Politics, Economy,
Society, Diplomacy. London: Longman, 2002.
This history aims to serve as a textbook on Brazil. Its chapters are rigorously organized, with each one breaking down into sections on politics, economy, society, and diplomacy, providing ready reference but impeding the book's narrative flow. A timeline, glossary of Portuguese terms, list of presidents, notes on sources cited, and a bibliographical essay with selected readings are included.
Maps:
|
|
|
W. W. Norton | Credits | Site Feedback | Technical Support | Print This Page