Book Description

BRAZIL- AN INTERPRETATION by GILBERTO FREYRE. Contents include: PREFACE v i. THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND OF BRAZILIAN HISTORY i ii. FRONTIER AND PLANTATION IN BRAZIL 35 in. BRAZILIAN UNITY AND BRAZILIAN REGIONAL DIVERSITY 66 iv. ETHNIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN MODERN BRAZIL 91 v. BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY AS CONDI TIONED BY BRAZIL'S ETHNIC, CULTURAL, AND GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION 123 vi. THE MODERN LITERATURE OF BRAZIL: ITS RELATION TO BRAZILIAN SOCIAL PROBLEMS 155 INDEX follows page 179. PREFACE: These lectures were delivered on the Patten Foun dation at Indiana University during the autumn of 1944. As in my previous essays and lectures on the social history of Brazil, published in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, the point of view is that of one r who at tempts to suggest a philosophy of Brazilian ethnic and social fusionism not the point of vie e w of rigidly impartial historians or sociologists, if such his torians and sociologists really exist. As a work of interpretation or synthesis, prepared especially for an Anglo-American public, these lectures are based on the various monographs that the author has written on the subject. In these monographs, particularly in Casa Grande & Senzala, published in Portuguese and Spanish and soon forth coming in English, the reader will find a more detailed presentation of a number of the topics here discussed and also fuller bibliographies. G. F. I: THE EUROPEAN BACKGROUND OF BRAZILIAN HISTORY. BRAZIL, which was discovered and colonized by the Portuguese, is sometimes called Portuguese America. As Portuguese America it is generally considered an ex tension of Europe, and in its main characteristics it remains Portuguese and Hispanic, or Iberian. It isalso Catholic, or a branch or variant of the Latin form of Christianity or civilization. But the facts that its origins are mainly Portuguese or Hispanic and that its principal characteristics are Latin Catholic do not make of Brazil so simple or pure an extension of Europe as New England was of old England and as New England was of Protestant or Evangelical Christianity in North America. For, as everyone knows, Spain and Portugal, though conven tionally European . states, are not orthodox in all their European and Christian qualities, experiences, and con ditions of life, but are in many important respects a mixture of Europe and Africa, of Christianity and Mo hammedanism. According to geographers the Hispanic peninsula is a transition zone between two continents; it is a popular saying that Africa begins in the Pyrenees a saying sometimes used sarcastically by Nordics. For eight centuries the Hispanic, or Iberian, penin sula was dominated by Africans. Arabs and Moors left their trace there. Though some of the modern Spanish and Portuguese thinkers ( like Unamuno) would have Spain and Portugal Europeanized with all speed, others ( like Ganivet) maintain that Spain and Portugal must look south, to Africa, for their future and for the ex planation of their ethos.