Books on Colonial Brazil and Brazilian Empire

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Marcus, Jacob R. The Colonial American Jew, 1492–1776. 3 vols. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970. A synthetic reconstruction of the colonial-era Jewish experience in North America (with an initial survey of Brazil and the West Indies). New Netherland and New York are covered in Volume 1. Volumes 2 and 3 are devoted, respectively, to economic activity among Jews and their religious life and to the place of Jews in the wider colonial American social order.
Bethell, Leslie. Brazil by British and Irish Authors. Oxford: Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford, 2003. Annotated guide to British and Irish travel writing on Brazil. It consists of three sections, covering 1500–1800, 1808–1945, and 1945–c. 2000; the middle section gives information on several Victorian travelers (including some resident in Brazil). Author and place indexes also included.
Beer, Gillian. Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. Places 19th-century readers’ cultural encounters in relation to scientific discourses, including Darwin’s voyages. Addresses relevant aspects of return, anthropology, linguistic theories, etc.; see especially chapter 3, “Travelling the Other Way: Travel Narratives and Truth Claims” (pp. 55–70), on truth, authenticity, and familiarity in the travel encounter.
Raby, Peter. Bright Paradise: Victorian Scientific Travellers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Accessible survey and analysis of a number of Victorian scientific travelers, including Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, and Thomas Henry Huxley. Centers on Africa, South America, and the Far East. One chapter considers female scientific travelers, mainly Mary Kingsley and the botanical artist Marianne North. Includes a brief discussion of the scientific traveler in fiction.
Larsen, Stein Ugelvik, ed. Fascism outside Europe: The European Impulse against Domestic Conditions in the Diffusion of Global Fascism. Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2001. A substantial volume on the interplay between the fascist regimes and those elsewhere who took inspiration from them. Along with essays on diffusion of the Italian and German examples specifically, others treat a wide variety of national cases around the world, from Brazil to China to the United States. The great majority focus on the era of fascism, but a few range into the postwar period.
Frank, Gary. Struggle for Hegemony in South America: Argentina, Brazil, and the United States during the Second World War. Miami, FL: Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, 1979. A good introduction to the broader issues in South America during the war.
McCann, Frank D., Jr. The Brazilian-American Alliance, 1937–1945. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973. This book covers both the diplomatic side of the relationship and the dispatch of a Brazilian force to fight alongside American troops in Italy.
Deutsch, Sandra McGee. 1999. Las derechas: The extreme right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. Using archival and secondary sources, Deutsch describes the intellectual and ideological origins of extreme right and fascist thinking that play out in Latin American regional and national contexts (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile) from World War I to 1939.
Livermore, Harold V., ed. Portugal and Brazil: An Introduction. Oxford: Clarendon, 1970. Collection of essays including useful bibliographies of writings by Aubrey Bell and Edgar Prestage, early-20th-century British pioneers of Portuguese Studies and major protagonists of a revival of interest in the country and its culture among English-
West, George. A List of the Writings of Charles Ralph Boxer Published between 1926 and 1984: Compiled for His Eightieth Birthday. London: Tamesis, 1984. Comprehensive bibliography of the most influential English-speaking historian (also an important book collector) of the Portuguese empire and the Luso-Brazilian world between 1500 and 1800. As a prolific writer of book reviews, herein listed, Boxer produced a well-informed, episodic chronicle of the field. See also Boxer 2002 (cited under History Writing and Study of Languages).
Ley, Charles D., ed. Portuguese Voyages, 1498–1663: Tales from the Great Age of Discovery. London: Phoenix, 2000. First published in 1947, this useful anthology for undergraduate teaching includes: the diary of the first voyage of Vasco da Gama to India; the letter on the discovery of Brazil by Caminha; a Portuguese embassy to Ethiopia in 1520–1526; the travels of Fernão Mendes Pinto (China, Vietnam and China Sea, Japan); shipwreck narratives; the voyages to the Red Sea and Ethiopia in 1625–1634; and overland travel from India to Portugal in 1663.
Boxer, Charles R., trans. Further Selections from The Tragic History of the Sea, 1559–1565: Narratives of the Shipwrecks of the Portuguese East Indiamen Aguia and Garça (1559), São Paulo (1561), and the Misadventures of the Brazil-Ship Santo António (1565). Cambridge, UK: Hakluyt Society, 1968. Shipwreck narratives of the ships Águia and Garça (1559), the São Paulo (1561), and the Santo António (1565), with an introductory essay establishing provenance and authorship of the texts. See The Tragic History of the Sea, 1589–1622.
Gândavo, Pero de Magalhães. The Histories of Brazil. Translated by John B. Stetson Jr. New York: Cortes Society, 1922. Written between 1568 and 1571, this geographical and economic description of Brazil was first printed in Lisbon in 1576. The author was an officer of the Brazilian city of Bahia in the 1570s and also wrote an important grammar of the Portuguese language. Early edition in Portuguese available online.
Greenlee, William B., trans. The Voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral to Brazil and India: From Contemporary Documents and Narratives. London: Hakluyt Society, 1938. Collection of sources relative to the voyage of Cabral in 1500, including English versions of Portuguese letters, accounts, and narratives of the voyage, as well as Italian reports. As the state of the question in 1938, this work remains an indispensable point of departure for the study of the voyage. Erudite apparatus including textual annotations and introductions.
Bethell, Leslie, ed. The Independence of Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511626043 Part of the Cambridge History of Latin America series, this volume includes five chapters written by well-respected historians. Topics are treated in a straightforward narrative manner and cover the origins of independence (John Lynch); events in Mexico and Central America (Timothy Anna), South America (David Bushnell), and Brazil (Bethell); the international dimension of the wars (D. A. G. Waddell); and a few concluding comments on the Catholic Church’s activities. Contains useful bibliographical essays for each topic.
Humphreys, R. A., and John Lynch, eds. The Origins of the Latin American Revolutions, 1808–1826. New York: Knopf, 1965. An older, but still useful, collection of straightforward, information-driven articles treating the origin, progress, and aftermath of the independence movements. Topics discussed include the impact of Enlightenment ideas, the expulsion of the Jesuits, international context of the revolutions, the decline of the Spanish Empire, the economy, creole nationalism, and the uniqueness of the Brazilian case. Editors have included some translated articles from Latin American authors, and a few primary sources as well.
Chambers, Sarah C., and John Charles Chasteen, eds. Latin American Independence: An Anthology of Sources. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010. Collection of thirty-four primary source selections. Unique for its inclusion of the Brazilian experience along with that of Spanish America, and for including some sources that reveal the way in which subsequent 19th-century Latin Americans looked back at their independence moments. Types of documents include manifestoes, patriotic verse, personal correspondence, editorials, broadsides, diplomatic dispatches, bylaws, and constitutional proposals.
Students should note that there are translated primary sources drawn from the independence era available in the various country-specific historical documentary readers published by Duke University Press (The Mexico Reader, The Argentina Reader, The Brazil Reader, etc.). Macaulay, Neill. Dom Pedro: The Struggle for Liberty in Brazil and Portugal, 1798–1834. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986. Straightforward narrative biography of Brazil’s first monarch. Murray, Pamela S. For Glory and Bolívar: The Remarkable Life of Manuela Sáenz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.
Ramos, Donald. “Social Revolution Frustrated: The Conspiracy of the Tailors in Bahia, 1798.” Luso-Brazilian Review 13.1 (1976): 74–90. Good overview of an early revolt among the working classes, related to similar pressures building elsewhere in the Atlantic World, notable for its emphasis on equality of classes and races.
Barbosa, Rosana. Immigration and Xenophobia: Portuguese Immigrants in Early 19th Century Rio de Janeiro. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009. Study complements the work of Kristen Schultz by focusing on the nonelite immigrants who accompanied the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro in 1808 and the resentment they faced from both locals and the enslaved population.
Barman, Roderick. Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 1798–1852. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988. Straightforward narrative account of the late colonial and early imperial years in Brazilian history by a prominent historian. A standard resource for readers who want a single-volume general history in English.
Flory, Thomas. Judge and Jury in Imperial Brazil 1808–1871: Social Control and Political Stability in the New State. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Important study of the changing juridical conditions associated with the transition from colony to independent state. Emphasizes the importance of courts in navigating the demands for more liberty while maintaining slavery. Harris, Mark. Rebellion on the Amazon: The Cabanagem, Race, and Popular Culture in the North of Brazil, 1789–1840. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Award-winning study of one of Brazil’s largest rebellions. The Cabanagem was a broad-based insurrection against royal authority that took place among the peasants and urban lower classes in the Amazon region. The author finds continuity with modern-day unrest.
Kraay, Hendrik. Race, State, and Armed Forces in Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790s–1840s. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Discusses the complicated situation in which the multiracial armed forces attempted to uphold order and create a new role for itself in the context of the transition away from slavery in the Bahia region.
Millington, Thomas. Colombia’s Military and Brazil’s Monarchy: Undermining the Republican Foundations of South American Independence. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1996. Compares two countries not normally paired together to argue that conservative nationalist forces in newly independent nations struggling to establish a new order amid a slave-based society shared similar agendas.
Schultz, Kirsten. Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821. New York: Routledge, 2001. Intensively researched study of the period in which the Portuguese court resided in the New World. Includes a discussion of the era’s diplomacy, life at court and among the elite, the physical transformation of Rio de Janeiro from a sleepy village to an imperial metropolis, the constitutional wrangling that accompanied the relocation of the monarchy and attempts to keep it unified, and the role of slaves and slavery as an institution in the modern age.
Dawson, Frank Griffith. The First Latin American Debt Crisis: The City of London and the 1822–1825 Loan Bubble. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1990. Outlines the disastrous history of the first loans contracted by independent Latin American nations. British investors loaned more than £20 million to representatives of Colombia, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Buenos Aires Province, the Central American Federation, and Brazil, nearly all of which quickly failed to meet their repayment schedules. Suggests that destructive borrowing patterns set early have persisted to the present day.
Uribe-Uran, Victor M. “The Great Transformation of Law and Legal Culture: ‘The Public’ and ‘The Private’ in the Transition from Empire to Nation in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, 1750–1850.” In Empire to Nation: Historical Perspectives on the Making of the Modern World. Edited by Joseph W. Esherick, Hasan Kayalı, and Eric Van Young, 68–105. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Clearly sets out the major shift in the role of law, lawyers, and legal culture that followed the Enlightenment ideals of constitutional representation, trial by jury, equality before the law, and increased status for legal professionals.
Langfur, Hal. The Forbidden Lands: Colonial Identity, Frontier Violence, and the Persistence of Brazil’s Eastern Indians, 1750–1830. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Counters the misconception that there were no organized indigenous groups in Brazil, and effectively proves that the increasing violence was evidence of intensifying racial and ethnic divisions during the late colonial and early independence eras.
Manning, William R. The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States Concerning the Independence of the Latin American Nations. 3 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1925. Massive three-volume collection of printed primary source documents, mainly drawn from the US Department of State archives. Volume 1 covers communications from the United States and Argentina; Volume 2 those from Brazil, Central America, Chile, Gran Colombia (today Colombia, Venezuela, and parts of Ecuador), and France; and Volume 3 those from Great Britain, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Russia, Spain, and Uruguay.
Sherbutt, T. Ray, ed. United States–Latin American Relations, 1800–1850: The Formative Generations. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991. Eight historians of US foreign policy discuss early diplomatic and consular relations with Central America, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Chile. Taken together, they make it clear that the US government did not invest significant resources in the region and did not have a clear, coherent policy toward the hemisphere as a whole; instead, diplomatic affairs were conducted by intemperate, inexperienced individuals who often were not well suited to their difficult tasks.
Brunelle, Gayle K. The New World Merchants of Rouen, 1559–1630. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1991. An archival study of the French merchants who engaged in trade with Brazil in the second half of the 16th century; looks at their trade practices but also their family strategies and participation in civic affairs.
Léry, Jean de. History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil. Translated by Janet Whatley. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. A translation of Léry’s Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil, first published in 1578 and then in an expanded edition
McGrath, John T. “Polemic and History in French Brazil, 1555–1560.” Sixteenth Century Journal 27.2 (1996): 385–397. DOI: 10.2307/2544140 A critical reassessment of traditional accounts of the failure of French attempts to colonize Brazil in the 1550s; argues that too much credence has been given to unreliable sources, in particular the accounts of Jean de Léry and Jean Crespin’s Book of Martyrs.
Bletz, May E. Immigration and Acculturation in Brazil and Argentina: 1890–1929. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. DOI: 10.1057/9780230113510 Explores questions of nationality in Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo, in the context of mass immigration to southern South America. By examining fictional, journalistic, and (pseudo)scientific texts of the period, the author argues that processes of representation and identity formation between national and immigrant groups have to be examined within the historical context of the host nations.
Baily, Samuel L. “The Italians and the Development of Organized Labor in Argentina, Brazil, and the United States, 1880–1914.” Journal of Social History 3.2 (1969): 123–134. DOI: 10.1353/jsh/3.2.123 Considers the role played by Italian immigrants in the labor movements of Argentina, Brazil, and the United States, and shows the importance of how these workers were received by their newly adopted countries.
Choate, Mark I. Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. With a marked emphasis on the era of mass immigration, the book deals with Italian politics between the 1880s and 1920s and their effects on the immigrant communities of Argentina, among others, including that of Brazil. Also examined are the role of Italian language and culture abroad and the debates that ensued on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mallalieu, Alfred. Rosas and his calumniators: The justice and policy of a triple alliance intervention of England, France, and Brazil in the affairs of the River Plate considered in letters to the Right Honourable the Earl of Aberdeen. London: E. Wilson, 1845. British journalist’s defense of Rosas against growing pressures from France, Brazil, and England over Rosas’ policies. Mallalieu expresses the views of the Rosas government that Argentina has and will continue to protect British interests and that Rosas’ strong hand is needed to prevent anarchy.
Akintoye, S. Adebanji. A History of the Yoruba People. Dakar, Senegal: Amalion, 2010. Interesting ethnohistory, tracing group beginnings back a millennium through the amalgamation of many small groups; assumes a group before it acquired an umbrella name and identity as Yoruba, which by most accounts only takes form in the 19th century. He shows the syncretization of Yoruba religious culture in its contacts with Christianity through the slave diaspora in Brazil and Cuba.
Falola, Toyin, and Ann Genova, eds. Yoruba Identity and Power Politics. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006. Goes back to the origin myths around Oduduwa, the eponymous ancestor. They trace the civil wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, resulting in a large flow of slaves to Brazil and Cuba in the final stages of slavery; one consequence was a sense of Yorubahood reflected in the cults of Santaria (Cuba) and Candomble (Brazil), as well as a reverse flow of Yoruba mercantile freedmen.
Tilly, Charles, ed. 1996. Citizenship, identity and social history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press. Contributors trace particular citizenship histories in countries such as England, the United States, France, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa. The editorial introduction is useful for a summary of dissenting notions of citizenship and for conceptual demarcations linked to citizenship in historical perspective.
Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent citizenship: Disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Rich ethnographic study demonstrating the emergence of the city as a site for citizens’ democratic struggles for basic rights within the historically inclusive, yet profoundly unequal, Brazilian citizenship model. Relies on data from São Paulo suburbs, where local residents’ mobilizations to resolve conflicts over land and housing arrangements brought about the appearance of new forms of participation involving a contentious relationship with the law.
Lockhart, James, and Stuart B. Schwartz. Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil. Cambridge Latin American Studies 46. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Sophisticated volume by two of the foremost scholars of colonial Iberian America. Probably best suited to upper-division classes. Includes a useful annotated bibliography.
Eltis, David, and David Richardson, eds. Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Voyages Database. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Includes essays on: the earliest Iberian Atlantic slave trade into the Caribbean by Antonio de Almeida Mendes; Africans in Cuba by Oscar Grandío Moráguez; and the slave trade to various Brazilian ports by Daniel Barros Domingues da Silva, David Eltis, Alexandre Vieira Ribeiro, and Manolo Florentino. One should also consult Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which is frequently updated.
Sweet, James H. Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. One of the first works in English to connect African cultural patterns to those found in Portugal and Brazil. Based on archival research in the Inquisition records of Lisbon as well as secondary works on Africa, Portugal, and Brazil.
Novais, Fernando A. “Brazil in the Old Colonial System.” In Brazil and the World System. Edited by Richard Graham, 11–56. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. English synthesis of Novais’s important work Portugal e Brasil na crise do antigo sistema colonial (1777–1808) (Sao Paulo, Brazil: Editora HUCITEC, 1979).
Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Exhaustive archival research by one of the foremost scholars of colonial Brazil. Covers the rise and decline of Brazil’s plantation economy and how it shaped society. Includes valuable tables, a glossary, and an essay on sources.
Maxwell, Kenneth. Pombal, Paradox of Enlightenment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Important and well-written work on Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the Marquis of Pombal and Portuguese Minister of the Kingdom, who was responsible for major enlightened reforms in Brazil while also strengthening absolutism in Portugal.
Langfur, Hal. The Forbidden Lands: Colonial Identity, Frontier Violence, and the Persistence of Brazil’s Eastern Indians, 1750–1830. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Innovative study of the frontier violence that occurred when the Portuguese Crown attempted to curtail gold smuggling and tax evasion in eastern Minas Gerais by making indigenous lands off-limits to settlers. Langfur finds a “cult of terror” created by the interethnic violence.
Lockhart, James, and Stuart B. Schwartz. Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil. Cambridge Latin American Studies 46. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Sophisticated volume by two of the foremost scholars of colonial Iberian America. Probably best suited to upper-division classes. Includes a useful annotated bibliography.
Eltis, David, and David Richardson, eds. Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Voyages Database. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Includes essays on: the earliest Iberian Atlantic slave trade into the Caribbean by Antonio de Almeida Mendes; Africans in Cuba by Oscar Grandío Moráguez; and the slave trade to various Brazilian ports by Daniel Barros Domingues da Silva, David Eltis, Alexandre Vieira Ribeiro, and Manolo Florentino. One should also consult Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which is frequently updated.
Johnson, John J. The Military and Society in Latin America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1964. Historical treatment of the role of the military in Latin America since independence by one of the leading scholars on this topic in the mid-1960s. Special attention given to the soldier as citizen and bureaucrat, military views on national issues, and public perception of the armed forces. Two chapters on Brazil.
Stepan, Alfred. The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971. Long-term view of conditions that influence patterns of civil-military relations. Focuses on institutional, political, and immediate socioeconomic conditions affecting the role of the armed forces in society and politics. Special attention to 1945–1968 period. Provides comparative analysis of five coups and the emergence of military rule after 1964. Excellent select bibliography.
Stepan, Alfred. Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. An essential source for elaboration of the concept of “military prerogatives” ingrained in constitutions, legislation, and political practice. Author applies these concepts to civil-military relations after transition from military to civilian government in the 1980s. A frequently cited benchmark book in the study of Latin American civil-military relations.
Pereira, Anthony W. Political (In)Justice: Authoritarianism and the Rule of Law in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. Analyzes in comparative perspective the role of military courts during dictatorships in Brazil and the Southern Cone. Also includes comparative materials from Europe and the United States after 11 September 2001. Considers the extent of “judicialization” of regime repression and application of national security legislation. Rich interview sources.
Biglaiser, Glen. Guardians of the Nation? Economists, Generals, and Economic Reform in Latin America. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002 Focuses on economic policies of military governments. Discusses policy choices, appointments to government posts of economists favoring neoliberal policies, policy formulation, privatization, and the role of ideas and ideology under military governments in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. Also provides some comparative material on Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.
Nunn, Frederick M. The Time of the Generals: Latin American Professional Militarism in World Perspective. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Invaluable resource on “military lore,” military professionalization, and professional militarism in comparative perspective. Focuses especially on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru, but puts these cases in regional and global perspective. Extensive bibliographical notes. An earlier publication by this author, Yesterday’s Soldiers (1983), focuses on the influence of German and French military missions.
Stepan, Alfred. Rethinking Military Politics, Brazil and the Southern Cone. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. Comparative analysis by a leading theorist on civil-military relations and military government of military prerogatives and transition toward civilian government in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. Focuses especially on the Brazilian case, the relative autonomy of military institutions, and the system of military intelligence.
Handelman, Howard, and Thomas Sanders, eds. Military Government and the Movement toward Democracy in South America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. Treats politics and military rule in Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile during late 1970s, with attention to internal opposition and prospects for return to civilian rule. Focused on completed transitions from military governments and the potential for return to civilian rule in Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile.
Loveman, Brian, and Thomas M. Davies Jr., eds. The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America. 3d ed. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997. Regional and country experts consider the historical background to the military regimes after 1959, motivations for establishing military governments, and consequences of military rule. Includes translations of military speeches and proclamations in a section called “The Military Speaks for Itself.” Case material on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
Lowenthal, Abraham, ed. Armies and Politics in Latin America. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1976. Theoretical consideration on the military in Latin America and case studies (Chile, Argentina, and Brazil); also treats civil-military relations in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Essays by well-known theorists and country experts. One of the first edited collections to consider the military governments of this period.
Wesson, Robert, ed. New Military Politics in Latin America. New York: Praeger, 1982. Case studies of military government in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru, and of the role of the military in Colombia and Venezuela. Essays by Edwin Lieuwen on the problem of military government, Wesson on populism and military coups, and Martin Needler on problems facing military governments.
Lowenthal, Abraham F. “Armies and Politics in Latin America.” World Politics 27.1 (October 1974): 107–130. DOI: 10.2307/2009928 Survey of key works on civil-military relations from 1968 to 1973 by a leading Latin Americanist. Provocative review with extensive bibliographic footnotes. Discusses Lieuwen 1968 (cited under Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico); Burggraaff 1972, Joxe 1970, Potash 1969, Stepan 1971, and Villanueva 1971 (all cited under South America); and O’Donnell 1973 (cited under “Time of the Generals” [1959–1990]); Also looks at Luigi Einaudi and Alfred Stepan, Latin American Institutional Development: Changing Military Perspectives in Peru and Brazil (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, April 1971).
Skidmore, Thomas E. The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Detailed account of the origins of the 1964 coup, policies and internal dilemmas of military governments in Brazil, and constraints on the democratization process, by one of the most prominent Brazilianists in the United States. Arguably the best single source on Brazilian civil-military relations and public policy in this period. Extensive references.
Arceneaux, Craig L. Bounded Missions: Military Regimes and Democratization in the Southern Cone and Brazil. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001. Comparative institutional approach to military regimes, regime breakdown or replacement, and transitions to civilian government, with chapters on Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay. Systematic analysis of institutional constraints and changes during transition and the challenges of democratization. Extensive notes and bibliography on theoretical aspects of civil-military relations and research on Latin America.
Zagorski, Paul W. Democracy vs. National Security: Civil-Military Relations in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992. Focused on changing patterns of civil-military relations during and after transition to civilian rule. Chapter 4 (“Patterns and Strategies of Civil-Military Relations”) is especially useful for alternatives available for civilian control and analysis of experience in Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile.
Mares, David, ed. Civil-Military Relations: Building Democracy and Regional Security in Latin America, Southern Asia, and Central Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998. Useful theoretical contribution on “conceptions of civil-military relations” by the editor, putting the Latin American experience in comparative perspective. Latin American cases Venezuela, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, compared with Czech and Slovak republics, Poland, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Thailand. Emphasizes normative and institutional aspects of civil-military relations.
Millett, Richard, and Michael Gold-Biss, eds. Beyond Praetorianism: The Latin American Military in Transition. Coral Gables, FL: North-South Center Press, University of Miami, 1996. Focuses on important changes and continuities in civil-military relations after the Cold War. Valuable country studies framed by discussions of dilemmas of hemispheric security. Includes chapters on Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru.
Agüero, Felipe. Soldiers, Civilians, and Democracy: Post-Franco Spain in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Premier comparative research on South American transitions and post-Franco Spain. Focused on Spain, but provides insightful analysis of the varied institutional impediments and opportunities for changing civil-military relations in Greece, Portugal, and South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay). Theoretical discussion very useful; notes (sixty pages) provide extensive bibliographical references.
Sotomayor, Arturo C. The Myth of the Democractic Peacekeeper. Civil-Military Relations and the United Nations. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School (Monterey, California) assesses the effects on Argentine, Brazilian, and Uruguayan civil-military relations of participation in UN peacekeeping missions. Extensive interviews call into question assumptions in the literature about the uniformly benign effects of such missions for military professionalization and more democratic civil-military relations. Excellent bibliography on international peacekeeping missions, changing civil-military relations in South America, and selected sources on international relations theory.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. A rich and rewarding exploration of “high-modernist” technocratic state planning efforts in Russia, Brazil, and Tanzania. In each case, technocratic thinking fails to achieve its goals due to its neglect of local knowledge.
McCormick, Sabrina. Mobilizing Science: Movements, Participation, and the Remaking of Knowledge. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Innovative analysis of social movements that challenge dominant practices of scientific knowledge production and expert advice, based on case studies of the anti-dam movement in Brazil and the environmental breast cancer movement in the United States. Shows how movements are easily co-opted by political and economic interests.
Jasanoff, Sheila, and Marybeth Long Martello, eds. Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. Examines a series of cases, from Germany to Brazil to Thailand, in which local practices of citizenship and knowledge production become intertwined with global political and scientific institutions.
Migdal, Joel S., Atul Kohli, and Vivienne Shue, eds. State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139174268 Based on the state-society approach to state theory (see Migdal 2001) the essays in this volume discuss the relationship between states, societies, and politics in the Third World, especially through case studies of Brazil, China, India, postcolonial Africa, and Egypt.
Woo-Cummings, Meredith, ed. The Developmental State. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Conceptual and case study articles on the “developmental state” as specific type of modern state characterized by governments that intervene in industrial affairs in their wish to promote economic advancement. Contributions explore relationships between political, bureaucratic, and economic developments in Japan, East Asia, France, Brazil, Mexico, and India.
Dunkerley, James, ed. Studies in the Formation of the Nation State in Latin America. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, 2002. Uses different disciplinary perspectives from culture and literature studies to historical and sociological approaches to look at different cases and aspects of modern state formation in Latin America. Essays on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Spain; topics comprise violence, military conscription, finance, development, and liberalism, among others. Good first overview.
Bach, Daniel C., and Mamodou Gazibo, eds. Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2012. Introduction to concepts and empirics of neopatrimonial rule, in which boundaries between public policies and private interests of the ruler are blurred and state resources used for rulers’ clientelistic relationships with (groups of) society. Case studies on Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia, Niger; also analyses neopatrimonialism in the Philippines, Brazil, Uzbekistan, Italy, and in France’s Africa policy.
Hiroi, Taeko. “The Dynamics of Lawmaking in a Bicameral Legislature: The Case of Brazil.” Comparative Political Studies 41.12 (2008): 1583–1606. DOI: 10.1177/0010414007308536 Examines the extent to which expected relationships between symmetry and divided government that exists in legislatures within developed democracies hold in the case of Brazil.
Rodden, Jonathan A. Hamilton’s Paradox: The Promise and Peril of Fiscal Federalism. Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. A federal government’s ability to commit not to bail out states—necessary to induce fiscal prudence—is dependent on party politics and voter expectations. Rodden includes an extended study of Germany and Brazil.
Samuels, David. Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511510366 Samuels’s research inverts conventional wisdom about progressive ambition, where local and state politicians seek higher office by contesting federal offices. Samuels demonstrates that in Brazil, the more appealing offices are at the state and local levels, and federal officials use their offices as stepping stones to more-regionalized roles.
Saad-Filho, Alfredo, and Deborah Johnston, eds. Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader. Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto, 2005. This edited collection of thirty essays approaches neoliberalism from theoretical, thematic, and case study perspectives. Short chapter by Saad-Filho provides an overview of neoliberalism’s displacement of import-substituting industrialization (ISI) in Latin America, focusing on Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
Fernández Jilberto, Alex E., and André Mommen, eds. Liberalization in the Developing World: Institutional and Economic Changes in Latin America, Africa and Asia. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. DOI: 10.4324/9780203030066.ch7 The introductory chapter puts Latin America in comparative perspective with Africa and East Asia, which provides a useful heuristic for determining what is unique. Case studies address political and economic aspects of liberalization in Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, and Argentina, with two chapters on Nicaragua.
Arceneaux, Craig L., and David Pion-Berlin. Transforming Latin America: The International and Domestic Origins of Change. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. Concentrates on US influence in shaping neoliberal economic and security policy. Chapter 3 deals with reforms in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, while human rights, immigration, and environmental degradation are addressed elsewhere.
Massey, Douglas S., Magaly Sánchez, and Jere R. Behrman. Chronicle of a Myth Foretold: The Washington Consensus in Latin America. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 606. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2006. Critically assesses the Washington Consensus while focusing on the negative social impacts of its policy agenda. Significant coverage of Brazil, Mexico, and Peru, as well as thematic essays. Offers “Quick Read Synopsis” that summarizes the articles.
Dezalay, Yves, and Bryant G. Garth. The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Analysis of how domestic and international professional expertise in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico played a vital role in the economic and legal reforms that flowed from and through the Washington Consensus. Draws on extensive set of interviews.
Demmers, Jolle, A. E. Fernández Jilberto, and Barbara Hogenboom, eds. Miraculous Metamorphoses: The Neoliberalization of Latin American Populism. London and New York: Zed, 2001. Despite neoliberal attacks on Latin American “populism,” neoliberal reforms in many countries were advanced by arguably populist politicians and parties. Case studies include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru as well as leftist difficulties in Central America.
Fanelli, Jose Maria, ed. Understanding Market Reforms in Latin America: Similar Reforms, Diverse Constituencies, Varied Results. Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Tightly integrated case studies by Latin American scholars explore the what, why, and how of market reform in Argentina (Menem), Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru (Fujimori), Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Introduction operationalizes variables clearly and provides chapter summaries.
Cook, Maria Lorena. The Politics of Labor Reform in Latin America: Between Flexibility and Rights. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Neoliberalism is powerfully associated with the “flexibilization” of labor relations and a general hostility to trade unionism. Cook examines labor law reform efforts in the 1990s in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru. The legacy of earlier labor law regimes and actions by labor organizations influenced the outcome.
Lawton, Jorge A., ed. Privatization amidst Poverty: Contemporary Challenges in Latin American Political Economy. Coral Gables, FL: North-South Center, 1995. While generally supportive, this volume focuses on the social costs incurred in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. Five essays deal with regional and international political and economic relations.
Madrid, Raúl L. Retiring the State: The Politics of Pension Privatization in Latin America and Beyond. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Through case studies of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, this book argues that executive control of the policy process was central while emphasizing the north-south and intraregional transfer of ideas that rationalized the reforms on the basis of macroeconomic rather than social grounds.
Manzetti, Luigi. Privatization, South American Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198294665.001.0001 Detailed study of the circumstances under which Argentina, Brazil, and Peru approached the privatization of public enterprises. Suggests that weak support and piecemeal efforts in the 1980s gave way to a watershed of state divestiture because willingness and opportunity coincided with strong executive leadership in both the deliberation and implementation stages.
Otero, Gerardo, ed. Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. A dozen essays explore the biotechnology subsector of agricultural production within the context of neoliberalism. First four chapters provide an overview of themes relevant to the region, while five examine cases in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
Weyland, Kurt Gerhard. The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Examines the convergence of democracy and market reform using cognitive psychology to explain both why politicians adopted “risky” neoliberal programs in the wake of economic crises and why a risk-averse electorate generally supported them. Extensive discussion on existing explanatory theories.
Wise, Carol, and Riordan Roett, eds. Post-stabilization Politics in Latin America: Competition, Transition, Collapse. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003. Examines Latin American politics in the wake of post-authoritarianism and neoliberal reform. The first part focuses on questions of electoral politics, citizenship, and social mobility regionally, while the subsequent three parts deal with political competition, transitional politics, and the collapse of parties in case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.
Oxhorn, Philip, and Graciela Ducatenzeiler, eds. What Kind of Democracy? What Kind of Market? Latin America in the Age of Neoliberalism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. This volume attempts to square processes of neoliberal transformation in the mid-1990s with the different forms of democracy in the region with case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.
Oxhorn, Philip, and Pamela K. Starr, eds. Markets and Democracy in Latin America: Conflict or Convergence? Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999. Analyzes the contingent and varied relationship between market reform and democratization, while eschewing linear causality. Case studies examine the political constraints on economic reform, as well as its reverse, in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.
Bulmer-Thomas, Victor, ed. The New Economic Model in Latin America and Its Impact on Income Distribution and Poverty. New York: St. Martin’s, 1996. This early collection assesses the outcomes of neoliberalism—dubbed the “new economic model”—on two key areas of social policy. Thematic portion looks at the new trade, labor market, and financial regimes across the region, while the second part includes case studies of poverty and income distribution in Honduras, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile.
Larraín, Felipe, and Marcelo Selowsky, eds. The Public Sector and the Latin American Crisis. San Francisco: International Center for Economic Growth, 1991. Collection of essays by leading neoliberal Latin American economists on public-sector responses to external oil shocks in the largest debtor nations. Favorably portrays the Chilean case under Pinochet, with chapters on Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.
Fernández-Kelly, Patricia, and Jon Shefner. Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Addresses the role played by the informal sector in the development of Latin American politics, with emphasis on the neoliberal period. Chapters cover thematic issues along with numerous chapters on Mexico and some discussion of Brazil and Argentina.
Phillips, Lynne, ed. The Third Wave of Modernization in Latin America: Cultural Perspectives on Neoliberalism. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1998. Anthropological approach to neoliberal transformation with a focus on marginalized social actors. Three sections deal with rural and urban life, and social, health, and environmental issues, with country coverage on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru.
Smith, William C., and Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz, eds. Politics, Social Change, and Economic Restructuring in Latin America. Coral Gables, FL: North-South Center, 1997. Structured around a Polanyian perspective, this collection explores large-scale social and political transformations wrought by neoliberalism. A strong section on citizenship and social movements precedes four case studies covering Brazil, the Caribbean Basin, and Mexico.
French, Jan H. “Ethnoracial Identity, Multiculturalism, and Neoliberalism in the Brazilian Northeast.” In Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads. Edited by John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts, 101–113. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. DOI: 10.1057/9780230618428 Article seeks to link identity-based to redistributive politics by focusing on indigenous and Black mobilization for recognition by the Brazilian state, which translated into concrete land reform in Sergipe.
Burdick, John, Philip Oxhorn, and Kenneth M. Roberts, eds. Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America? Societies and Politics at the Crossroads: Basingstoke, UK, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. DOI: 10.1057/9780230618428 Edited volume addresses emerging alternatives to neoliberalism organized around four thematic headings: electoral politics, identity politics, environmental governance, and transnational migration. The Andean region is particularly well represented, with chapters on Brazil, Nicaragua, and Chile complementing region-wide essays.
Grugel, Jean, and Pía Riggirozzi, eds. Governance after Neoliberalism in Latin America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. DOI: 10.1057/9780230622425 Assuming that neoliberalism is in crisis, this book focuses on various aspects of alternative modes of political economic governance throughout the region. Special attention is given to economic governance post-Washington Consensus, as well as case study chapters on Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela, and Brazil.
Leiva, Fernando Ignacio. Latin American Neostructuralism: The Contradictions of Post-neoliberal Development. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Dissects and criticizes the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean’s variant of neostructuralism from a broadly French Regulation School perspective. The book offers an interpretation of the historical trajectory of the development discourse before providing a thorough deconstruction of it. Focuses primarily on Chile, with analysis of Brazil as well.
Veigel, Klaus Friedrich. Dictatorship, Democracy, and Globalization: Argentina and the Cost of Paralysis, 1973–2001. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Attempting to provide continuity between the initiation of the military dictatorship and the resignation of Fernando de la Rúa (2001), the book charts the crisis of consensus during the transition to a neoliberal political economic model, which ultimately led to its dazzling failure. Comparison with Brazil and Chile made as well.
Amman, Edmund, and Werner Baer. “Neoliberalism and Its Consequences in Brazil.” Journal of Latin American Studies 34 (2002): 945–959. Overview essay by prominent Brazilianist economists argues the middle ground of neoliberalism in the country, criticizing anemic growth and uneven income distribution while praising price and macroeconomic stability. Anticipating greater state involvement in the economy, they propose expanded expenditure in human capital to develop the post-industrial service economy as a policy recommendation.
Font, Mauricio A., Anthony Peter Spanakos, and Cristina Bordin, eds. Reforming Brazil. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2004. Collection sketches out critical elements of Brazil’s reform process, with special attention devoted to Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s contribution. Topics include monetary, agrarian, and social policy, political reform, and privatizations, in addition to coverage of the responses of different social classes.
Fortes, Alexandre. “In Search of a Post-neoliberal Paradigm: The Brazilian Left and Lula’s Government.” International Labor and Working-Class History 75 (2009): 109–125. DOI: 10.1017/S0147547909000088 Discusses the left within Brazil in response to the Lula government, and in the context of how the “pink tide” of left governments throughout Latin America has demanded rethinking of neoliberalism as a banner around which to critique government policy.
Kingstone, Peter R. Crafting Coalitions for Reform: Business Preferences, Political Institutions, and Neoliberal Reform in Brazil. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. An addition to the literature on neoliberal implementation as well, the book seeks to understand why industrialists embraced neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, and how these preferences facilitated the creation of both governing and electoral coalitions during the Collor and Cardoso governments.
Kingstone, Peter R., and Timothy J. Power, eds. Democratic Brazil Revisited. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. This follow-up collection assembles twelve articles on different policy and institutional issues arising out of Brazil’s post-neoliberal shift. Collectively, the contributors argue that while Brazil has seen some recent successes, particularly in the arena of social policy and in the resilience of its institutions, its political culture has been slow to change.
Wolford, Wendy. “Neoliberalism and the Struggle for Land in Brazil.” In Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences. Edited by Nik Heynen, 243-254. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Chapter examines the debates in Brazil between market and state-led land reform under the Cardoso administration, emphasizing its preference with the former as part of a broader neoliberal agenda. The edited collection is also of general interest on the topic of environmental governance, including a chapter on Guyana’s gold fields.
Camacho, Jorge. “Martí en inglés: Una traducción desconocida: Argument for the Argentine Republic upon the Question with Brazil.” La Habana Elegante 48 (2010). Here Camacho analyzes a translation by Martí that was commissioned by the Argentine government in 1893 and was previously unknown. It is a diplomatic translation and for that reason his name doesn’t appear in the book, but according to Camacho, Martí translated part of this document into English and directed a group of translators that did most of the work.
Carr, Barry, and Steve Ellner, eds. The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993. An assortment of contributions that trace the performance of the Latin American Left (defined in party, electoral, and union terms) in the last decades of the Cold War. Essays focus on Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela to collectively argue that the Latin American Left emerged ready to engage a democratic, postdictatorship era. Good for undergraduates and scholars.
Klein, Herbert, and Ben Vinson III. African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. An updated and revised overview of African slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean, first published by Klein in 1982. It covers 18th-century topics such as an overview of slavery in the century; slavery and the plantation economy in the Caribbean, Brazil, and the Guyanas; life, death, and the family; slave community and culture; and resistance and freedmen.
Law, Robin, and Paul E. Lovejoy. The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2001. This important work by two eminent historians of Africa follows the Atlantic Creole Baquaqua from Africa to Brazil to New York and traces his transition from enslavement into freedom.
Reis, João José. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia. Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. This is a detailed study of an urban revolt led by literate Muslims who were enslaved in a Nigerian jihad and deported to Brazil. Includes information on the multilingual leaders of the revolt and the repression that followed the failure of the revolt.
Sweet, James H. Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Based on archival research in the Inquisition records of Lisbon as well as in secondary works on Africa, Portugal, and Brazil, this work traces cultural connections between Portugal, Lusophone Africa, and Brazil and highlights a number of Atlantic Creoles.
Sweet, James H. Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. This is a biographical study of an 18th-century African healer and vodun priest who was transported as a slave to Brasil, where he gained modest fame as a healer, only to be prosecuted by the Inquisition and shipped to Portugal. There he ended his days in obscurity.
Wheat, John David. “The Afro-Portuguese Maritime World and the Foundations of Spanish Caribbean Society, 1570–1640.” PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2009. Based on extensive archival research in 16th- and 17th-century records in Spain, Portugal, Cuba, and Colombia, this path-breaking dissertation demonstrates the unrecognized influence of Luso-African and Portuguese slave traders in shaping the contours of Spanish Caribbean society.
Souza, Marcos André Torres de, and Luís Cláudio Pereira Symanski. 2009. Slave communities and pottery variability in western Brazil: The plantations of Chapada dos Guimarães. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 13.4: 513–548. DOI: 10.1007/s10761-009-0090-1 Explores the nature of slave life on one plantation in the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil, during the 18th and 19th centuries, paying particular attention to society, economy, and the pottery the slaves made for themselves. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Funari, Pedro, Andrés Zarankin, and Melisa Salerno, eds. 2009. Memories from darkness: Archaeology of repression and resistance in Latin America. New York: Springer. Eleven chapters focusing on the archaeological analysis of sites in Colombia, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico. Includes a chapter on the search for Che Guevara’s remains in Bolivia.
Kennedy, John, and L. L. Langness, eds. 1981. Special issue: Dreams. Ethos 9.4. This special issue includes contributions by Thomas Gregor on the Mehinaku of Brazil, Barbara Herr on Fijians, Benjamin Kilborne on Moroccans, Waud Kracke on the Kagwahiv of Brazil, Sarah Levine on the Gusii of Kenya, and Barbara Tedlock on the Quiché Maya.
Kracke, Waud H. 1981. Kagwahiv mourning: Dreams of a bereaved father. Ethos 9:258–275. DOI: 10.1525/eth.1981.9.4.02a00020 Through psychoanalytic dream interpretation sessions, Kracke reveals the sublimated mourning and guilt of a young Parintintin headman in central Brazil. He differs from classical Freudian tradition in seeing the “primary process” of the headman’s dreams as no less sophisticated than the “secondary process” of conscious thought.
Basso, Ellen B. 1985. A musical view of the universe: Kalapalo myth and ritual performances. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. An ethnography of the Kalapalo, a tiny group of Carib-speaking Indians who live in a state of artificial isolation in the Xingu National Park of central Brazil. Discusses dream reporting and interpretation as a ritual performance, which is believed to have illocutionary effects on the future.
Kracke, Waud H. 1992. He who dreams: The nocturnal source of transforming power in Kagwahiv shamanism. In Portals of power: Shamanism in South America. Edited by E. Jean Mattesson Langdon and Gerhard Baer, 127–148. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press. Shamanism among the Kagwahiv (a Tupi-speaking people of central Brazil) has almost died out, but in former times shamans used to gain healing power from being visited by spirits while in trance—a state of mind considered by the Kagwahiv to be very similar to dreaming.
Kracke, Waud H. 2006. To dream, perchance to cure: Dreaming and shamanism in a Brazilian indigenous society. Social Analysis 50:106–120. DOI: 10.3167/015597706780810943 Dream interpretation among the Parintintin (Kagwahiv) people used to be the preserve of shamans, but nowadays everyone is thought to have the ability to gain insights into their future from dreams. This article describes how one informant, while not a shaman himself, experienced a shaman’s cosmic journey in dreams.
Freire, Paulo. 2000. Pedagogy of the oppressed. Translated by Myra Ramos. New York: Continuum. Cornerstone text of critical literacy. Freire’s description of dehumanizing, “banking” methods of education of oppressed peoples, his articulation of a “problem-posing” consciousness and praxis through reading the word and the world, and the example of his adult literacy work in Brazil paved the way for critical literacy’s liberatory vision. Originally published in 1970.
Graham, Laura R. 1995. Performing dreams: Discourses of immortality among the Xavante of Central Brazil. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. A beautifully written example of the application of ethnography of communication to understanding a culture, Graham’s book looks at the Xavante religion, mythology, and identity through songs and dance performances.
Simon, William Joel. Scientific Expeditions in the Portuguese Overseas Territories (1783–1808): And the Role of Lisbon in the Intellectual-Scientific Community of the Late Eighteenth Century. Centro de Estudos de Cartografía Antiga, Série Memórias No. 22. Lisbon, Portugal: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, 1983. Investigates the colonial appointments and naturalist expeditions (of divergent success) of four Luso-Brazilian University of Coimbra graduates sent to Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, and Cabo Verde. Provides helpful insight into the quotidian operations of such postings, but also traces the growing Portuguese focus on Brazil, at the expense of African and Indian Ocean possessions, upon scientific investigation of its commercial and strategic potential.
Furtado, Júnia Ferreira. “Tropical Empiricism: Making Medical Knowledge in Colonial Brazil.” In Science and Empire in the Atlantic World. Edited by James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew, 127–152. New York: Routledge, 2008. Treats the development of natural histories of Brazil, particularly in terms of materia medica, from the more traditionally scholarly productions of the Dutch period to the publications of 18th-century barber-surgeons. Identifies the common threads of the incorporation of local knowledge, direct observation, global movement of people and books, and Luso-Brazilian participation in a European community of scholars.
Boxer, C. R., ed. Catalogue of Philippine Manuscripts in the Lilly Library. Occasional Papers, no. 2. Bloomington: Asian Studies Research Institute of Indiana University, 1968. Boxer was one of the foremost scholars of his age on matters pertaining to early modern European colonialism in Asia and Brazil. The jewel of this catalogue is the so-called Boxer Codex, a manuscript penned in 1595 that contains seventy-five color illustrations of the various ethnic groups residing in the Philippines at that time.
Genovese, Eugene D.From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World. Louisiana State University Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. Examines marronage as a form of anticapitalist resistance before the mid-18th century. Not specific to Latin America, but derives many examples from Brazil and Spanish America. Although controversial, this work is, nonetheless, one of the very few to systematically frame marronage within the broader sweep of slave revolts and revolutions in the Americas.
Schwartz, Stuart B.Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery. Blacks in the New World. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996. The fourth essay in this collection, “Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil,” offers original insights into and analysis on Brazilian marronage in three key regions: Bahia, Minas Gerais, and Palmares (Alagoas). Considered are reasons for and frequency of escape, methods of slave control and recapture, community size, and relations with outsiders as well as the transplanting of African cultural structures and forms.
Duncan, T. Bentley. Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verdes in Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. This book examines in detail the role of the Atlantic islands in Portuguese commerce. The author convincingly demonstrates the importance of commodity production in the islands, the existence of interisland trade circuits, and the strong commercial connections linking the Portuguese Atlantic islands to West Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil, and above all to Portugal. The book contains a wealth of data presented in tables and maps.
Hanson, Carl A. Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal, 1668–1703. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981. This work analyzes in detail the changes in the Portuguese mercantilist system, and the political and economic tensions between merchants and nobles and the clergy. The author emphasizes the significant role of the commercial groups in Portuguese society, specifically the role of New Christians. Hanson examines the Crown attempts to stimulate colonial trade between Asia, Africa, and Brazil. The author draws on Portuguese sources.
Garzón, Juan Carlos. Mafia & Co.: The Criminal Networks in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2008. Strong empirical source on the contemporary shape of shifting organizations, with some reference to emergence patterns.
Rubin, Vera, ed. Cannabis and Culture. Paris: Mouton, 1975. DOI: 10.1515/9783110812060 Rubin places more stress on social patterns and culture of the drug than trafficking; a few essays (Jamaica, Brazil, Colombia) have historical depth. Published in 1975 and never superseded by newer or fuller historical studies of marijuana in the Western Hemisphere.
Arias, Desmond. Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2006. Pioneering lengthy ethnography of violence-prone 1990s favela trafficking and its convoluted relation to policing authorities.
Drug Law Reform in Latin America: Brazil. Website provides a portal into the current highly active Brazilian movements of drug-reform and related substance-abuse activism.
Scobie, James R. “The Growth of Latin American Cities, 1870–1930.” In The Cambridge History of Latin America. Vol. 4, C. 1870 to 1930. Edited by Leslie Betchell, 233–265. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986. An overview of demographic changes based on primary information about Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. It also includes “economic functions” such as commerce, bureaucracy, and industry; physical transformations in terms of the railway networks and the urban sprawl; followed by the political consequences of urbanization.
Fraser, Valerie. Building the New World: Studies in Modern Architecture of Latin America 1930–1960. London: Verso, 2000. Highlighting the case studies of Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, the book articulates the major state-funded projects of modern architecture and city planning. It features not only the high-profile buildings of Brasilia, Rio, Mexico City, and Caracas, but also less-known social housing and educational architecture. Well-chosen photographs and plans.
Almandoz, Arturo. Modernization, Urbanization and Development in Latin America, 1900s-2000s. London: Routledge, 2014. An eight-chapter overview of the relationship and imbalances between industrialization, urbanization, modernization, and development in 20th-century Latin America, with emphasis on Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela. Appendixes include Dramatis Personae; tables on urban population per country; urbanization, growth, and level of transition; Human Development Index per country.
Haber, Stephen, ed. How Latin America Fell Behind: Essays on the Economic History of Brazil and Mexico. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. This collection of essays addresses the question of why Mexico and Brazil lagged behind the United States in the 19th century. Addresses transportation, public finance, and capital markets. Framed as a rebuttal to dependency theory and a model for a new economic history.
de la Torre, Carlos, and Cynthia J. Arnson, eds. Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century. Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 2013. This collection of essays addresses the reemergence of populism as part of the discussion of contemporary Latin American politics and compiles twelve contributions by leading scholars, including analytical works on parties and populism, the debate on democratic deepening, and populism and social policies, in addition to case studies on populism in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia.
Conniff, Michael L. “Brazil’s Populist Republic and Beyond.” In Populism in Latin America. Edited by Michael L. Conniff, 43–62. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999. Conniff discusses the role of rhetoric, the working class, and welfare programs in the rise of Brazilian populism. Populist leaders built their success on the mobilization of the working class and their work in the provincial or city governments. Through construction of schools and hospitals, populist leaders gained provincial recognition and support. Using this support, regional populist leaders would then campaign nationally for the Brazilian presidency.
Bethell, Leslie. “Populism, Neo-Populism and the Left in Brazil: From Getulio to Lula.” In Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Carlos de la Torre and Cynthia J. Arnson, 179-202. Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 2013. Bethell claims that many Brazilian populist leaders were authoritarian, impatient with existing democratic institutions, the judiciary, and the media, which they regarded as fundamentally hostile to the interests of “the people.” He then historically analyzes national and subnational leaders verifying if they deserve the populist attribution; the most interesting section of this analysis is devoted to Lula, who resisted the “populist temptation.”
Conniff, Michael L. Urban Politics in Brazil: The Rise of Populism, 1925–1945. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981. Conniff sees the emergence of 1920s reformers, among them the populist Pedro Ernesto Baptista. According to Conniff, this populist leader managed, as mayor of Rio de Janeiro, to rely on an expanding vote, use the media, and generate public debate, thus making populism a model for urban politics in other large Brazilian cities, a style later adopted by Vargas.
Fagundes Haussen, Doris. “Radio and Populism in Brazil: The 1930s and 1940s.” Television and New Media 6.3 (2005): 251–261. DOI: 10.1177/1527476404273950 Fagundes explores the role of radio under President Getulio Vargas in his attempt to develop a nationwide Brazilian culture, arguing that radio served as an instrument in connecting people with the politics of the state through programs like “Hora do Brasil.” With censorship as its main tool, the government under Vargas used radio to create a new Brazilian culture. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Wolfe, Joel. “‘Father of the Poor’ or ‘Mother of the Rich’? Getulio Vargas, Industrial Workers, and Constructions of Class, Gender and Populism in Sao Paulo, 1930–1954.” Radical History Review 58 (1994): 80–112. DOI: 10.1215/01636545-1994-58-80 Wolfe studies the labor rhetoric of President Vargas and its consumption by São Paolo workers. Wolfe claims that the workers measured Vargas according to their experiences and did not readily accept his programs during 1930–1945. These interactions between the workers and Vargas led to the social construction of populism most visible during the 1945–1964 era of open competitive Brazilian politics. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Wolfe, Joel. “From Working Mothers to Housewives: Gender and Brazilian Populism from Getúlio Vargas to Juscelino Kubitschek.” In Gender and Populism in Latin America: Passionate Politics. Edited by Karen Kampwirth, 91–109. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Wolfe analyzes the different policies of these two presidents, indicating that though Vargas promoted modernization, it did nothing to change the extant gender ideologies. Under Kubitschek’s developmentalism, a middle-class ethos was promoted, yet the ideals of developmentalism would be the source of promotion of bottom-up democracy in place of a top-down program of political incorporation and socioeconomic transformation.
Martz, John D. “The Regionalist Expression of Populism: Guayaquil and the CFP, 1940–1960.” Journal of Interamerican and World Affairs 22.3 (1980): 289–314. DOI: 10.2307/165491 Martz explores the conceptual debate concerning populism, using the example of the CFP in Guayaquil to focus on the Moreno-led regional populist movement that occupied the political space between 1948 and 1960. It focuses on three factors: sources of support, leadership style and organization, and political doctrine. Though a different manifestation from Argentine or Brazilian populism, the CFP offers a clear example of populism. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Skidmore, Thomas. The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–85. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. The foremost Brazilianist in the United States provides a detailed account of the origins of the 1964 coup, policies and internal dilemmas of military governments in Brazil, and constraints on the democratization process. Arguably the best single source on the Brazilian military governments from 1964 to 1985. Extensive chapter endnotes with bibliographical references and explanatory narrative.
Stepan, Alfred. The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971. Leading expert on the role of the military in Latin American politics considers the institutional background and patterns of civil-military relations before the 1964 coup, the breakdown of the “moderating pattern” of military influence in politics, and the first four years of military government (1964–1968). Seminal work in the effort to theorize about the precipitating factors in military coups and the limits of military government.
Baloyra, Enrique A. El Salvador in Transition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Excellent political history of El Salvador from 1948 to 1981. Chapters 4–5 treat the governments of Arturo Molina (1972–1977) and Carlos Humberto Romero (1977–1979), increasing militarization of the state and political repression. Compares and contrasts Salvadoran case to military regimes in post-1968 Brazil, Pinochet’s Chile, and Argentina post-1976. Assesses the turning point in 1979, the ensuring civil war, and the policies of Reagan administration toward El Salvador. Many primary documentary sources.
Rishel, Joseph, ed. The Arts in Latin America, 1492–1820. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Spectacular publication connected to the largest and most ambitious exhibition of Latin American colonial art to date (2011), including Brazil. Contains more than three hundred entries and seventeen essays by international scholars. Seeks to expand the canon in terms of media that are included and of attention to the presence and interaction of European, American, Asian, and African traditions.
Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London: Verso, 2002. Focusing on the late 19th and early 20th century, Davis examines the confluence of events of weather patterns, US and European capitalist and imperial expansion, and the creation of third-world famine. In this sweeping history, several chapters touch upon Latin America, and the book concludes with an analysis of the Brazilian northeast.
Voigt, Lisa. “Spectacular Wealth: Baroque Festivals and Creole Consciousness in Colonial Mining Towns of Brazil and Peru.” In Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empires, Texts, Identities. Edited by Ralph Bauer and José Antonio Mazzotti, 265–292. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. This analysis of the periphery of the viceregal capitals focuses on the literary and festive renditions of the Baroque in the mining boom-towns, Potosí and Minas Gerais, tracing the creole identity formation at the center of ostensibly religious and imperial ceremonies and writings. Argues that the boasting of creole identity is as much a motivation as any religious or civic devotion might have been.
Postma, Johannes, and Victor Enthoven, eds. Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585–1817. Atlantic World 1. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003. This collection of fourteen essays covers various areas of Dutch Atlantic engagement, including Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Guinea coast. There are also two survey essays that address the entire length of a Dutch imperial presence in the Atlantic, from the 16th century through the early 19th century.
Vale, Brian. A War betwixt Englishmen: Brazil against Argentina on the River Plate, 1825–1830. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000. Vale examines a confrontation between the early navies of Brazil and Argentina.
Alden, Dauril. Royal Government in Colonial Brazil: With Special Reference to the Administration of the Marquis of Lavradio, Viceroy, 1769–1779. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Although this work does not address the city directly, it does offer an acute analysis of the government of the Marquis of Lavradio, an important viceroy of the State of Brazil. Rio was the capital from where economic reforms were set in motion, wars architected against the Spanish, and measures introduced to restore finances. The geography of the administration deserves special mention.
Boxer, C. R. The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695–1750: Growing Pains of a Colonial Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. A panorama of the discovery of gold mines and the consequent immigration of Portuguese, Portuguese-Brazilians, and slaves to Brazil’s Center-South. Such events led to the political and economic axis shifting from Bahia and Pernambuco to Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.
Bauss, Rudolph. “Rio de Janeiro: The Rise of Colonial Brazil´s Dominant Emporium, 1777–1808.” PhD diss., Tulane University, 1977. This thesis sets out to analyze the economic expansion of Brazil’s Center-South in order to understand the predominance of Rio de Janeiro as the main political and commercial center between 1777 and 1808. To this end, the work resorts to an analysis of trade balances and the correspondence of the viceroys.
Brown, Larissa Virginia. “Internal Commerce in a Colonial Economy: Rio de Janeiro and Its Hinterland, 1790–1822.” PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1986. This work shows the importance of the domestic market in Rio de Janeiro and surroundings in the period prior to independence. Not only was the city a large hub for consumers, but it also acted as a metropolis for Brazil and for peripheral ports on the map of overseas trading.
Florentino, Manolo. “The Slave Trade, Colonial Markets, and Slave Families in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ca. 1790–ca. 1830.” In Extending The Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. Edited by David Eltis and David Richardson, 275–312. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. From 1808 onward, there was a notable increase in the number of African slaves in Rio de Janeiro. Dependence on the slave trade had its origins in the significant entry of adult men, rather than women and children. In spite of the inability of this population to reproduce, the predominance of Africans threatened the crioulos in the slave communities.
Klein, Herbert S. “The Trade in African Slaves to Rio de Janeiro, 1795–1811.” Journal of African History 10.4 (1969): 533–549 DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700009695 This pioneer study on the slave trade points to the appalling conditions and high mortality rate resulting from transportation of slaves from Angola and Benguela to the port of Rio de Janeiro. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Karash, Mary C. Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro (1808–1850). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. The most in-depth study of slavery in Rio de Janeiro, this book places emphasis on daily life, ethnic and social diversity, and forms and conditions of work in place at the time. It also shows the rise of a rich Afro-carioca culture different from that of the other localities of Brazil.
Graham, Maria. Journal of a Voyage to Brazil and Residence There during Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. The daily life and architecture of several cities along the coast are described. As far as Rio de Janeiro is concerned, not only its inhabitants and its urban and natural landscape, but also political facts of importance for the independence of Brazil, are described. Excellent drawings accompany the text.
Luccock, John. Notes on Rio de Janeiro, and the Southern Parts of Brazil: Taken during a Residence of Ten Years in That Country, from 1808 to 1818. London: S. Leigh, 1820. This merchant registered the daily life of the city and the functioning of religious and civil institutions. He witnessed the profound changes in politics and customs as a result of the transferring of the Portuguese Court. As regards the southern regions, he also dwells on trading and the presence of the English following the opening of the ports. Also available online.
Barman, Roderick. Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 1798–1852. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988. An analysis of the mechanisms responsible for the political unity of Brazil based on the plans proposed by Souza Coutinho and the installing of the Portuguese Court in Rio. The book investigates the construction of Brazilian identity, the institutions created by the Portuguese government, and how they served to keep the state national.
Aulden, Dauril. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Survey of the global history of the Society of Jesus in the Portuguese world from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Traces this history from its beginnings in Portugal to the establishment of a vast network of monks and missionaries from Goa to Brazil.
Boxer, Charles R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–1825. London: Hutchinson, 1969. Breathless and engaging survey of Portuguese global expansion that has stood the test of time, deeply sensitive to the relationships among various zones of Portuguese influence, from Goa to Brazil. Reprinted in 1991 (Manchester, UK: Carcanet).
Brockey, Liam Matthew, ed. Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Modern World. Farnham, UK; and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008. Studies of various urban histories in Portuguese colonial world, including Goa, Mozambique, Luanda, Macau, and others.
Abel, Christopher, and Colin M. Lewis. Latin America, Economic Imperialism, and the State: The Political Economy of the External Connection from Independence to the Present. London and Dover, NH: Athlone, 1985. Collective work that compiles eighteen contributions divided into five sections. The first section, theoretical in nature, discusses the dependentist theses, while sections 2 and 3 deal with the economic history of the 19th century through both issue-based (protectionism, railways, industrialization) and national (Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, and the Dominican Republic) frameworks.
Graham, Richard, ed. The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. Collection of four essays written by Thomas Skidmore, Allan Knight, and Aline Helg on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Cuba; useful for beginner students as well as for researchers.
Mahoney, James. Colonialism and Postcolonial Development: Spanish America in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511750328 Chapters 4–7 address, in an Atlantic perspective, the economic history of an emancipated Spanish America by comparing it to Brazil as well as Anglophone and Francophone regions.
Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011. Addresses the late abolitions of slavery (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil) in a comparative perspective. Useful to beginner and advanced students.
Salomon, Frank, and Stuart B. Schwartz. The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas. Vol. 3, Part 1, South America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. An anthropological and historical perspective on the indigenous peoples of South America (including Brazil) that adopts an outline structured by macroregions with accompanying maps, illustrations, and bibliographies. A synthesis that constitutes a good starting point for students in general.
Staden, Hans. Hans Staden’s True History: An Account of Cannibal Activity in Brazil. Edited and translated by Neil L. Whitehead and Michael Harbsmeier. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Mid-16th-century account of the Tupi Indians of Brazil by a German prisoner.
Archdiocese of Sao Paulo. Torture in Brazil: A Shocking Report on the Pervasive Use of Torture by Brazilian Military Governments, 1964–1979. Translated by Jaime Wright. Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas, 1998. Originally published in Portuguese as Brasil: Nunca mais (Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1985), this extensive collection of records documents the torture of thousands of victims of Brazil’s military dictatorship.
Richards, John F. “The Americas.” In The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. By John F. Richards, 309–460. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. In the four chapters that make up this section of the book, Richards explores early modern environmental changes in the West Indies, Mexico, and Brazil, coming to a similar conclusion as Crosby—that transfers of animals, plants, and diseases represented by far the most important environmental impacts on the Americas—but adding additional insight and more recent bibliographical references.
Richards, John F. The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Includes case studies from Taiwan, China, Japan, South Africa, the West Indies, Mexico, Brazil, eastern North America, Siberia, and the northern oceans as well as the British Isles. A pathbreaking work.
Alden, Dauril. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Comprehensive study of the rise of the Jesuit order and its expansion in Portugal and beyond. Chapter 9 deals with Jesuit enterprises in Brazil, and chapter 20 with migrations within the Portuguese Atlantic motivated or forced by the Society of Jesus.
McCusker, John J., and Kenneth Morgan, eds. The Early Modern Atlantic Economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. An edited collection focused primarily on the British Atlantic economy (with some attention to France and Brazil). Networks feature prominently in the chapters by Peter Mathias (chapter 1), Kenneth Morgan (chapter 2), and David Hancock (chapter 5). Mathias, in particular, explores the operations of kinship networks.
Mulvey, Patricia A. “Slave Confraternities in Brazil: Their Role in Colonial Society.” The Americas 39.1 (July 1982): 39–68. DOI: 10.2307/981269 Explores the wide range of religious, social, and economic functions performed by slave confraternities in colonial Brazil. Argues that they functioned as conservative mutual aid societies. Confraternities facilitated the upward mobility of slaves by providing legal advice to slaves involved in disputes over their freedom and loans to members so that they could purchase their freedom. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Burdick, John. 1998. Blessed Anastácia: Women, race, and popular Christianity in Brazil. New York: Routledge. Examines attitudes to race and ethnicity in Brazil through interviews with poor women from different religious backgrounds. Considers the implications for black consciousness of different attitudes on race, gender, religion, and the body.
van de Kamp, Linda. 2011. Violent conversion: Brazilian Pentecostalism and the urban pioneering of women in Mozambique. PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit. Traces the growth of Brazilian Pentecostal churches in Mozambique, which attract upwardly mobile women. Argues that conversion often brings tension in relationships and money strains.
Chesnut, R. Andrew. 2003. Competitive spirits: Latin America’s new religious economy. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Analyzes why and how Protestant Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African diaspora religions such as Brazilian Candomblé and Haitian Vodou emerged as the most profitable religious producers in a situation of increasing religious pluralism in Latin America.
Willems, Emílio. 1967. Followers of the new faith: Culture change and the rise of Protestantism in Brazil and Chile. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt Univ. Press. Classic early anthropological study of conversion to Protestantism and Pentecostalism, based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in several regions of Brazil and Chile, paying special attention to cultural, economic, psychological, and social variables.
Oosterbaan, Martijn. 2006. Divine mediations: Pentecostalism, politics, and mass media in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. PhD diss., Univ. of Amsterdam. Analyzes the dramatized representation of violence, consumption, and love in the mass media of Pentecostal churches in Brazil as well as their socioeconomic and sociopolitical consequences for slum dwellers. Based on eleven months of intensive, local ethnographic research.
Patterson, Eric. 2014. Latin America’s neo-Reformation: Religion’s influence on contemporary politics. New York: Routledge. Evaluates the hypothesis that Protestants’ attitudes toward and involvement in politics are markedly different from that of Catholics, focusing on the intersection between religion and politics in Brazil, Chile, and Mexico in particular.
Matory, J. Lorand. 2005. Black Atlantic religion: Tradition, transnationalism, and matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Employs a dialogic approach to the emergence of Afro-Brazilian religion, integrating simultaneous developments in Africa and the Americas.
Selka, Stephen. 2007. Religion and the politics of ethnic identity in Bahia, Brazil. New World Diasporas. Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida. DOI: 10.5744/florida/9780813031712.001.0001 Selka explores the ways that race, religion, and ethnic identity have interacted in modern Brazil, focusing particularly on views of the Afro-Brazilian tradition known as Candomble.
Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London: Verso, 2001. A weighty but readable book exploring the influence of liberal economics and liberal imperialism on the great famines (India, China, Brazil, Africa) of 1876–1902. Broadens out to an analysis of the processes whereby the “West” pulls away from the “rest.”
Khanna, Parag. The Second World: How Emerging Powers Are Redefining Global Competition in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Random House, 2009. Well-received and wide-ranging survey of the 21st century’s diplomatic challenges. Emphasis on growing importance of transitional states. Suggests likely competition for hegemony and influence among Europe, the United States, and China in emerging states such as Brazil, Egypt, and Malaysia. A lively and important study, valuable to all researchers of contemporary diplomacy.
East, Maurice A., and Justin Robertson, eds. Diplomacy and Developing Nations: Post-Cold War Foreign Policy-Making Structures and Processes. New York: Routledge, 2005. Useful collection of essays. Includes theoretical essays and case studies on Brazil, China, the Caribbean, Egypt, Ghana, and Malaysia. Interesting insights into economic aspects of diplomacy, globalization, and non-state actors. Does a good job of eschewing outdated models and assumptions. Suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and experts alike.
Alden, Dauril. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. The organization, finances, and policies of the Jesuits from Brazil to Angola, India to Japan.
Mulvey, Patricia A. “Slave Confraternities in Brazil: Their Role in Colonial Society.” The Americas 39.1 (July 1982): 39–68. DOI: 10.2307/981269 African and mestizo confraternities exercised limited legal powers within their communities. They sometimes challenged colonial authorities by bringing cruel slave owners to court and lending members money in order to buy their freedom.
Dutra, Francis A. Military Orders in the Early Modern Portuguese World: The Orders of Christ, Santiago, and Avis. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006. Selection of essays on early modern Portuguese military orders (which expended also in India and Brazil), whose membership was highly prized as status symbols and because of their employment of purity-of-blood statutes.
Mattos, Hebe. “‘Pretos’ and ‘Pardos’ between the Cross and the Sword: Racial Categories in Seventeenth Century Brazil.” Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe/European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 80 (2006): 43–55. Discusses the meaning of “race” in the context of the Portuguese statutes of purity of blood, especially in relation to the peoples of African descent. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Wadsworth, James E. Agents of Orthodoxy: Honor, Status, and the Inquisition in Colonial Pernambuco, Brazil. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Based on wide archival research, discusses the Inquisition in colonial Pernambuco as a powerful tool for exclusion and promotion in Brazilian society, which was deeply affected by the concept of purity of blood in association with honor and prestige.
Wachtel, Nathan. The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinths. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2013. The most important recent work on crypto-Jews in the Americas, focusing on the colonial period but stretching to the present. Wachtel’s interest stretches from Mexico to Lima to Brazil. Original French edition, La foi de Souvenir. Labrythes marranes (Paris: Seuil) published in 2001.
Sweet, James H. Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. An imaginative and innovative study of the degree to which Kongo and other Central Africans were able to maintain their cultures and influence emerging Brazilian culture. See also Thornton and Heywood 2007.
Thornton, John K. The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonian Movement, 1684–1706. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511572791 The riveting story of a Kongo woman possessed by the spirit of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of both Portugal and Kongo. Practiced in both Kongo and Catholic beliefs, she sought to restore peace and order to Kongo amid the social and political disruptions caused by the slave trade that sent tens of thousands of Kongo into slavery in Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.
Cordingly, David. Cochrane: The Real Master and Commander. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007. An informative biography of one of the most colorful British admirals, who distinguished himself fighting against the French navy and later took part in the liberation of Chile, Peru, and Brazil.
Léry, Jean de. 1990. History of a voyage to the land of Brazil. Translated by Janet Whatley. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. First published in Geneva in 1578, Léry’s account contains abundant information about the ecology of the Atlantic basin and Brazil in the generations before widespread environmental change. An edition in Latin produced in the Frankfurt workshop of the Flemish engraver Theodor de Bry in 1592 gave vivid expression to the ideas of Léry, who was the first Huguenot missionary in the western hemisphere.
Lopes, Priscila, and Alpina Begossi, eds. 2009. Current trends in human ecology. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars. A wide-ranging and interdisciplinary sampling of papers presented at the XV International Meeting of the Society for Human Ecology, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2007, edited by two Brazilian specialists in the behavior and ethnoecology of fisher-folk. This collection, with sections on human ecology and the environment, knowledge and management, and integrating human ecology, is distinctive in its approach to environmental degradation because it emphasizes the views of peoples who directly depend on natural resources and because it offers a perspective from the global South.
Carneiro, Robert L. 2008. Slash-and-burn agriculture: A closer look at its implications for settlement patterns. In Environmental anthropology: A historical reader. Edited by Michael R. Dove and Carol Carpenter, 249–253. Malden, MA: Blackwell. A study of carrying capacity under swidden agriculture. Based on his study of the Kuikuru of central Brazil, Carneiro argues that swidden cultivation of manioc in the tropical forest can support up to five hundred persons in a nucleated settlement on a long-term, sustainable basis; thus, the move of any community below that size cannot be attributed to environmental degradation. Originally published in 1960.
Peters, Charles M., Alwyn H. Gentry, and Robert O. Mendelsohn. 1989. Valuation of an Amazonian rainforest. Nature 339.6227: 655–656. DOI: 10.1038/339655a0 The premise of rainforest marketing that tropical forest resources have been neglected owes much to this widely cited study, which concludes that the theoretical value of sustainable exploitation of nontimber forest products in the Amazon exceeds that of exploiting the timber or converting the land to other uses. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Schwartzman, S. A. 1989. Extractive reserves: The rubber tappers’ strategy for sustainable use of the Amazon rain forest. In Fragile lands: Latin America: Strategies for sustainable development. Edited by John O. Browder, 150–155. Boulder, CO: Westview. Schwartzman, at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, DC, was a pioneer in advocating for the establishment of extractive reserves in the Brazilian Amazon, in particular to benefit the seringueiros or rubber tappers.
Brondízio, Eduardo S. 2008. Amazonian caboclo and the açaí palm: Forest farmers in the global market. Bronx: New York Botanical Garden. Tells the story of the boom in the acai fruit economy—from a rural staple to a chic health food delicacy in national and international markets—and examines the development of the production systems and commodity chains required to supply the burgeoning demand for it. Brondizio also reconsiders the contested and stigmatized history of the social identity of the acai producers, the caboclos.
Fearnside, Philip M. 1997. Monitoring needs to transform Amazonian forest maintenance into a global warming-mitigation option. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 2.2–3: 285–302. DOI: 10.1007/BF02437209 Prescient assessment of the challenges to REDD, taking Brazil as a case study: (i) REDD rewards bad behavior; (ii) it is difficult to ensure a link between intervention and forest protection and to balance the cost of monitoring against benefits; (iii) REDD does not address the institutional/political issues in deforestation; and (iv) most deforestation is from medium- to large-sized farms, not the small farmers targeted by REDD. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Posey, Darrell A. 2008. Indigenous management of tropical forest ecosystems: The case of the Kayapó Indians of the Brazilian Amazon. In Environmental anthropology: A historical reader. Edited by Michael R. Dove and Carol Carpenter, 89–101. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Shows how the Kayapó utilize, conserve, and even create what otherwise appear to be natural islands of vegetation in savanna by means of often mundane daily activities that contribute to enriched afforestation. This research helped to make Kayapó into an iconic group of “primitive environmentalists” and contributed to the more general movement toward the study of indigenous environmental knowledge and promotion of indigenous resource rights. First published in 1985.
Lahsen, Myanna. 2004. Transnational locals: Brazilian experiences of the climate regime. In Earthly politics: Local and global in environmental governance. Edited by Sheila Jasanoff and Marybeth L. Martello, 151–172. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. A critique of the notion of a monolithic, transnational epistemic community of climate scientists by one of the foremost analysts of the North–South politics of climate change, based on long-term fieldwork in Brazilian institutions. Lahsen concludes that not only does the transnational epistemic community appear internally fractured along geopolitical lines but important fractures also reveal themselves at the national level and even within the subjectivities of individual scientists
Peters, Charles M., Alwyn H. Gentry, and Robert O. Mendelsohn. 1989. Valuation of an Amazonian rainforest. Nature 339.6227: 655–656. DOI: 10.1038/339655a0 The premise of rainforest marketing that tropical forest resources have been neglected owes much to this widely cited study, which concludes that the theoretical value of sustainable exploitation of nontimber forest products in the Amazon exceeds that of exploiting the timber or converting the land to other uses. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Schwartzman, S. A. 1989. Extractive reserves: The rubber tappers’ strategy for sustainable use of the Amazon rain forest. In Fragile lands: Latin America: Strategies for sustainable development. Edited by John O. Browder, 150–155. Boulder, CO: Westview. Schwartzman, at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, DC, was a pioneer in advocating for the establishment of extractive reserves in the Brazilian Amazon, in particular to benefit the seringueiros or rubber tappers.
Brondízio, Eduardo S. 2008. Amazonian caboclo and the açaí palm: Forest farmers in the global market. Bronx: New York Botanical Garden. Tells the story of the boom in the acai fruit economy—from a rural staple to a chic health food delicacy in national and international markets—and examines the development of the production systems and commodity chains required to supply the burgeoning demand for it. Brondizio also reconsiders the contested and stigmatized history of the social identity of the acai producers, the caboclos.
Vidal Luna, Francisco. Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo, 1750–1850. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Well-researched account of slavery and the coffee industry during the coffee boom in Brazil in the 19th century.
Kraay, Hendrik. Race, State, and Armed Forces in Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790’s–1840’s. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Kraay takes a holistic approach toward the military of postindependence Brazil, specifically the Bahia region; the role of the militia as a tool of national liberation is discussed.
Mische, A., and P. Pattison. 2000. Composing a civic arena: Publics, projects, and social settings. Poetics 27.2: 163–194. DOI: 10.1016/S0304-422X(99)00024-8 Mische and Pattison analyze a contentious political arena composed of diverse actors in the context of the 1992 Brazillian impeachment movement. They expand the technique of Galois Lattices to simultaneously examine the involvement of organizations, events, and projects. Their analysis reveals how the relations between organization as well as roles and discursive strategies of organizations changed over the course of the movement.
Mische, A. 2008. Partisan publics: Communication and contention across Brazilian youth activist networks. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. Mische analyzes a contentious political field composed of youth activists, their overlapping memberships in organizations, and representations at public events. Overlapping memberships in diverse organizations mean multiple identities that activists suppress or highlight in public (à la Goffman). Such strategies are used to minimize differences to foster new ties. Her work is especially important for understanding forms/styles of political communication in social movements.
Mische, A. 2008. Partisan publics: Communication and contention across Brazilian youth activist networks. Princeton Univ. Press. Mische uses an ethnographic approach to analyze a contentious political field composed of youth activists, their overlapping memberships in organizations, and representations at public events. Overlapping memberships in diverse organizations mean multiple identities that activists suppress or highlight in public (à la Goffman). Such strategies are used to minimize differences to foster new ties. Her work is especially important for understanding forms/styles of political communication in social movements.
Mische, A., and P. Pattison. 2000. Composing a civic arena: Publics, projects, and social settings. Poetics 27.2: 163–194. DOI: 10.1016/S0304-422X(99)00024-8 Mische and Pattison analyze a contentious political arena composed of diverse actors in the context of the 1992 Brazilian impeachment movement. They expand the technique of Galois lattices to simultaneously examine the involvement of organizations, events, and projects. Their analysis reveals how the relations between organization as well as roles and discursive strategies of organizations changed over the course of the movement.
Hedegard, Danielle. 2013. Blackness and experience in omnivorous cultural consumption: Evidence from the tourism of capoeira in Salvador, Brazil. Poetics 41:1–26. DOI: 10.1016/j.poetic.2012.11.003 Based on extensive participant observation of capoeira practice in Salvador, Brazil. Interactions between tourists and capoeira practitioners focus on constructed symbols of authentic blackness and exoticism. Omnivorous tourists valorize marginal symbols in their quest for authentic experience.
Bunker, Stephen G. 1984. Modes of extraction, unequal exchange, and the progressive underdevelopment of the extreme periphery: The Brazilian Amazon, 1600–1980. American Journal of Sociology 89:1017–1064. DOI: 10.1086/227983 Examines how extractive economies are negatively affected because of the detrimental consequences they have on their ecology. Although it benefits the economy of developed regions, the Amazon suffers because it eventually becomes impoverished. The author intends to create awareness about this problem.
Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, and Enzo Faletto Verne. 1979. Dependency and development in Latin America. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. Provides a periodization of Latin American economic development, focusing in particular on the transition from the focused development of internal markets to the rise of global trade in the postwar era. In the 1979 postscript, the authors reexamine their original hypothesis in view of later developments. Cardoso would later become the two-term president of Brazil. Originally published in 1966.
D’Souza, Herbert. “Return Ticket to Brazil.” Third World Quarterly 9.1 (1987): 203–211. DOI: 10.1080/01436598708419969 This study follows the transformation of Brazilian exile from selective into a more widespread phenomenon in 1969–1979. It also analyzes the initial flow of returnees in the 1970s, with little impact in politics; the substantial participation of returning politicians starting in the 1982 elections and how following re-democratization and the 1986 elections, the political cycle of exile reached its end with the exiles’ reintegration.
Bollig, Ben. “Exiles and Nomads: Perlongher in Brazil.” Hispanic Research Journal 7.4 (2006): 337–351. DOI: 10.1179/174582006X150966 Bollig focuses his paper on the exiled Argentine poet and anthropologist Néstor Perlongher, who fled to Brazil in the early 1980s after suffering police persecution. Bollig uses Perlongher’s poetry to study the contradictions of the exile condition; for example, Perlongher’s works fluctuate between celebrating the freedom of exile and the repression in the homeland that it represented.
Neves-Xavier de Brito, Angela. “Brazilian Women in Exile: The Quest for an Identity.” Latin American Perspectives 13.2 (1986): 58–80. DOI: 10.1177/0094582X8601300204 Neves-Xavier de Brito explored the quest for identity of Brazilian women in exile, following the hypothesis that exile served as a critical influence on the construction of identity. On the basis of interviews with forty Brazilian women and secondary source documents, the author shows the “social significance” of the feminist organizations crafted in exile.
Rollemberg, Denise. “The Brazilian Exile Experience: Remaking Identities.” Latin American Perspectives 34.4 (2007): 81–105. DOI: 10.1177/0094582X07302948 Rollemberg presents an account of the Brazilian diaspora through testimonies, looking at how day-to-day life in exile prompted a redefinition of individual and collective identities. Studying the exile condition and its implications—fear, loss of roots and references, distress—the author also illuminates how beyond survival, exile opened new opportunities for reflection, free thought, and change.
Barman, Roderick J. Citizen Emperor: Pedro II of Brazil, 1825–1891. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. In Barman’s monograph focusing on Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, Barman argues Pedro’s role in shaping the Brazilian nation. Chronicling his political rise and fall, Barman also examines the military coup in 1889 that overthrew Pedro II and exiled him to Europe. The work offers valuable insights into the political use of exile as a means of punishing former dignitaries.
Barman, Roderick J. “Brazilians in France, 1822–1872: Doubly Outsiders.” In Strange Pilgrimages: Exile, Travel and National Identity in Latin America, 1800–1990s. Edited by Ingrid E. Fay and Karen Racine, 23–39. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2000. Barman explores the wave of Brazilians who migrated to France from 1822 to 1872, revealing their divergent motivations for leaving the homeland and documenting the challenges they faced—including separation, culture shock, language barriers, financial struggles, and loneliness. Barman invokes Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural capital” to argue that Brazilians capitalized on their time in France upon their return to Brazil.
 Wiznitzer, Arnold. Jews in Colonial Brazil. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960. Describes how Jews were expelled to or found refuge in Brazil in the early 1500s after the forced conversions in Portugal, their role in the early establishment of the sugar industry, trade connections with coreligionists who had fled to Amsterdam, life during the Dutch occupation, and the continuity of secret religious practices after the return of the Portuguese.
West, George. A List of the Writings of Charles Ralph Boxer Published between 1926 and 1984: Compiled for His Eightieth Birthday. London: Tamesis, 1984. Comprehensive bibliography of the most influential English-speaking historian (also an important book collector) of the Portuguese empire and the Luso-Brazilian world between 1500 and 1800. As a prolific writer of book reviews, herein listed, Boxer produced a well-informed, episodic chronicle of the field. See also Boxer 2002 (cited under History Writing and Study of Languages).
Wadsworth, James E. “In the Name of the Inquisition: The Portuguese Inquisition and Delegated Authority in Colonial Pernambuco, Brazil.” The Americas 61.1 (2004): 19–52. DOI: 10.1353/tam.2004.0118 Explores the role of the Inquisition in policing religious and moral orthodoxy, and the institutional mechanisms it used to do so, including its reliance on existing colonial political establishments. Contains information on those Brazilians tried in Portugal as crypto-Jews.
Wadsworth, James E. Agents of Orthodoxy: Honor, Status, and the Inquisition in Colonial Pernambuco, Brazil. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Based on wide archival research, discusses the Inquisition in colonial Pernambuco as a powerful tool for exclusion and promotion in Brazilian society, which was deeply affected by the concept of purity of blood in association with honor and prestige.
Vieira, Nelson H. “The Luso-Brazilian Joke.” Western Folklore 39.1 (1980): 51–56. DOI: 10.2307/1499764 Article focuses on popular jokes in Brazil that ridicule Portuguese immigrants as greedy, gluttons, and dense. It attempts to connect this type of ethnic humor with Brazilian nationalism.
Verger, Pierre. Trade Relations between the Bight of Benin and Bahia from the 17th to the 19th Century. Ibadan, Nigeria: University of Ibadan, 1976. Pioneer study on West Africa links to Bahia, in Brazil, and Brazilian presence in West Africa. Published originally in French in 1968, it was later published in English and Portuguese. Innovative research shaped the way scholars understood trade and personal relations in the South Atlantic world.
Verger, Pierre. Bahia and the West Coast Trade (1549–1851). Ibadan, Nigeria: Institute of African Studies, Ibadan University Press, 1964. Pierre Verger’s monumental work documents the trade in slaves between Bahia, Lagos, and Dahomey. The book draws from primary sources deposited in African, European, and South American archives. Verger contends that after the 17th century, Portuguese merchants were not allowed in the area, but Brazilian traders could operate under specific conditions (only using tobacco for buying slaves and paying fees).
Smith, David Grant. “Old Christian Merchants and the Foundation of the Brazil Company, 1649.” Hispanic American Historical Review 54.2 (May 1974): 233–259. This article examines in detail the board members and officers of the Brazil Company. The author argues that the New Christian merchants were crucial in providing capital for the company. The author suggests that in the mid-17th century, the Portuguese Crown turned to the New Christian merchant-bankers to finance the colonial enterprise in Brazil. The author uses sources primarily deposited in Portuguese archives. Available online for purchase or by subscription. DOI: 10.2307/2512568
Simon, William Joel. Scientific Expeditions in the Portuguese Overseas Territories (1783–1808): And the Role of Lisbon in the Intellectual-Scientific Community of the Late Eighteenth Century. Centro de Estudos de Cartografía Antiga, Série Memórias No. 22. Lisbon, Portugal: Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical, 1983. Investigates the colonial appointments and naturalist expeditions (of divergent success) of four Luso-Brazilian University of Coimbra graduates sent to Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, and Cabo Verde. Provides helpful insight into the quotidian operations of such postings, but also traces the growing Portuguese focus on Brazil, at the expense of African and Indian Ocean possessions, upon scientific investigation of its commercial and strategic potential.
Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Exhaustive archival research by one of the foremost scholars of colonial Brazil. Covers the rise and decline of Brazil’s plantation economy and how it shaped society. Includes valuable tables, a glossary, and an essay on sources.
Rollemberg, Denise. “The Brazilian Exile Experience: Remaking Identities.” Latin American Perspectives 34.4 (2007): 81–105. DOI: 10.1177/0094582X07302948 Rollemberg presents an account of the Brazilian diaspora through testimonies, looking at how day-to-day life in exile prompted a redefinition of individual and collective identities. Studying the exile condition and its implications—fear, loss of roots and references, distress—the author also illuminates how beyond survival, exile opened new opportunities for reflection, free thought, and change.
Rishel, Joseph, ed. The Arts in Latin America, 1492–1820. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Spectacular publication connected to the largest and most ambitious exhibition of Latin American colonial art to date (2011), including Brazil. Contains more than three hundred entries and seventeen essays by international scholars. Seeks to expand the canon in terms of media that are included and of attention to the presence and interaction of European, American, Asian, and African traditions.
Reis, João José. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia. Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. This is a detailed study of an urban revolt led by literate Muslims who were enslaved in a Nigerian jihad and deported to Brazil. Includes information on the multilingual leaders of the revolt and the repression that followed the failure of the revolt.
Raminelli, Ronald. Viagens ultramarinas: Monarcas, vassalos e governo à distância. São Paulo, Brazil: Alameda, 2008. Identifies the importance of the patronage relationships between the Portuguese Crown in Lisbon and the Luso-Brazilian intellectual elite in securing loyalty to the Crown throughout the empire. Aside from the patronage itself, its delivery in the form of support for voyages of discovery and other projects in the interior of Brazil, and Portuguese possessions in Africa and Asia as well, served to define these large hinterlands as Portuguese colonial spaces.
Postma, Johannes, and Victor Enthoven, eds. Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585–1817. Atlantic World 1. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2003. This collection of fourteen essays covers various areas of Dutch Atlantic engagement, including Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Guinea coast. There are also two survey essays that address the entire length of a Dutch imperial presence in the Atlantic, from the 16th century through the early 19th century.
Peel, J. D. Y. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. A seminal study of the critical roles that early Yoruba converts and missionaries, many of whom were freed slaves familiar with the Yoruba diaspora in Cuba, Brazil, and elsewhere, played in the development of Yoruba consciousness.
Peabody, Sue, and Keila Grinberg, eds. Slavery, Freedom, and the Law in the Atlantic World: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. Short volume on the legal debate over freedom and slavery in the North and South Atlantic. Includes transcription and translation of important legal codes on the French Caribbean, Spain and its colonies, and Portugal and Brazil.
Novais, Fernando A. “Brazil in the Old Colonial System.” In Brazil and the World System. Edited by Richard Graham, 11–56. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. English synthesis of Novais’s important work Portugal e Brasil na crise do antigo sistema colonial (1777–1808) (Sao Paulo,
Needell, Jeffrey. A Tropical Belle Époque: Elite, Culture and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Rio de Janeiro. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. A well-documented study of the architectural and Haussmann-like renewal of the Brazilian capital between 1898 and 1914, combined with literary tastes, cultural institutions, and mores of the emerging bourgeoisie. Publications in Portuguese in 1993 and in Spanish in 2013 have secured the book’s influence on Latin America’s urban cultural history.
Mulvey, Patricia A. “Slave Confraternities in Brazil: Their Role in Colonial Society.” The Americas 39.1 (July 1982): 39–68. DOI: 10.2307/981269 Explores the wide range of religious, social, and economic functions performed by slave confraternities in colonial Brazil. Argues that they functioned as conservative mutual aid societies. Confraternities facilitated the upward mobility of slaves by providing legal advice to slaves involved in disputes over their freedom and loans to members so that they could purchase their freedom. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Mosher, Jeffrey C. “Political Mobilization, Party Ideology, and Lusophobia in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Pernambuco, 1822–1850.” Hispanic American Historical Review 80.4 (2000): 881–912. DOI: 10.1215/00182168-80-4-881 Shows how the Praieiros, a political group in Pernambuco allied with the Liberal Party, appealed to nationalist and class resentment among the native-born middle and lower classes in the decades following independence by denouncing Portuguese immigrants, who continued to control much of the local commerce, as clannish, imperialist, and exploiters.
Moraes, Rubens Borba de. Bibliographia Brasiliana: Rare Books about Brazil Published from 1504 to 1900 and Works by Brazilian Authors of the Colonial Period. 2 vols. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1983. Repertory including many texts from the Renaissance with abundant annotation about the content, biography of authors, and careful bibliographical description of each work.
Miller, Joseph C. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. This classic book examines the commercial connections between Angola, Brazil, and Portugal during the 18th century. The author examines the significance of commercial capitalism in Luanda and its hinterland, as well as the role of prominence of Brazilian merchants in conducting trade in slaves and in other goods. The author emphasizes the role of mercantile networks and the violence involved in the trade with slaves.
Miller, Joseph C. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. This classic book examines the commercial connections between Angola, Brazil, and Portugal during the 18th century. The author examines the significance of commercial capitalism in Luanda and its hinterland, as well as the role of prominence of Brazilian merchants in conducting trade in slaves and in other goods. The author emphasizes the role of mercantile networks and the violence involved in the trade with slaves.
Metcalf, Alida C. Go-betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Examines interactions among sailors, traders, slaves, interpreters, negotiators, writers, and cartographers in connection with relations between indigenous people and Europeans in the Portuguese colonization of Brazil.
Miller, Joseph C. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Massive study that places Angola in the Atlantic world, exploring the establishment of slaving business along the coast of West Central Africa. Innovative and still important study in its link between Angola and Brazil.
Maxwell, Kenneth R. “Pombal and the Nationalization of the Luso-Brazilian Economy.” Hispanic American Historical Review 48.4 (1968): 608–631. Older article traces the Marquis de Pombal’s mostly successful efforts to reassert Portuguese control over maritime trade, which had been slowly usurped by the British navy. DOI: 10.2307/2510901
McPhee, Kit. “‘Immigrants with Money Are No Use to Us’: Race and Ethnicity in the Zona Portuária of Rio de Janeiro, 1903–1912.” The Americas 62.4 (2006): 623–650. DOI: 10.1353/tam.2006.0085 Examines the relations of European immigrants, particularly Portuguese, with their Afro-Brazilian neighbors in the port district of Rio de Janeiro, and the latter’s use of racial (blackness) and national (Brazilian citizenship and patriotism) discursive strategies in their responses to the newcomers.
Mattos, Hebe. “‘Pretos’ and ‘Pardos’ between the Cross and the Sword: Racial Categories in Seventeenth Century Brazil.” Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe/European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 80 (2006): 43–55. Discusses the meaning of “race” in the context of the Portuguese statutes of purity of blood, especially in relation to the peoples of African descent. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Mattos, Hebe. “Black Troops” and Hierarchies of Color in the Portuguese Atlantic World: The Case of Henrique Dias and His Black Regiment.” Luso-Brazilian Review 45.1 (2008): 6–29. An important article that follows the establishment of hiearchies of color classification in military order in the Portuguese empire during the 17th century. Explores notions of racial exclusion and social mobility within the empire by comparing similarities and differences between Angola and Brazil.
Matory, J. Lorand. Black Atlantic Religion. Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Study on the modern “Black Atlantic.” Yet, unlike Heywood 1999, stresses the Yoruba influence in Brazilian Candomblé and denies any West Central African contribution. Emphasizes transnational links and cultural exchanges between Brazil and West Africa.
Marchant, Alexander. From Barter to Slavery: The Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500–1580. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1942. Identifies three distinct periods: 1500–1533, when Portuguese merchants bartered Brazilwood with natives while fighting the French, a struggle that would continue during the rest of the century; 1533–1549, when the first colonist arrived, making a living by cultivating sugar, cotton, and manioc and bartering these for indigenous labor; and 1549–1580, when growing exports and demands for labor led to the emergence of Indian slavery.
Mamigonian, Beatriz. “In the Name of Freedom: Slave Trade Abolition, the Law and the Brazilian Branch of the African Emigration Scheme (Brazil–British West Indies), 1830s–1850s.” Slavery and Abolition 30.1 (2009): 41–66. Important study on Africans liberated by the British government in the 19th century. Mamigonian reveals the scheme linking the British patrols to the plantations in the British West Indies. With the excuse of curtailing slavery in Brazil, British officials transported “freed” Africans as indentured laborers to the colonies in the Caribbean.
Macaulay, Neill. Dom Pedro: The Struggle for Liberty in Brazil and Portugal, 1798–1834. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986. Straightforward narrative biography of Brazil’s first monarch.
Luccock, John. Notes on Rio de Janeiro, and the Southern Parts of Brazil: Taken during a Residence of Ten Years in That Country, from 1808 to 1818. London: S. Leigh, 1820. This merchant registered the daily life of the city and the functioning of religious and civil institutions. He witnessed the profound changes in politics and customs as a result of the transferring of the Portuguese Court. As regards the southern regions, he also dwells on trading and the presence of the English following the opening of the ports. Also available online.
Livermore, Harold V., ed. Portugal and Brazil: An Introduction. Oxford: Clarendon, 1970. Collection of essays including useful bibliographies of writings by Aubrey Bell and Edgar Prestage, early-20th-century British pioneers of Portuguese Studies and major protagonists of a revival of interest in the country and its culture among English-speaking publics.
Law, Robin, and Paul Lovejoy, eds. The Biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua. His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2007. Revised and commented edition of the biography of the African Baquaqua, who traveled around the South Atlantic. Offers the perspective of an enslaved African from Central Sudan, shipped out of Ouidah to Brazil. After living in different coastal towns in Brazil, he went to New York City, where he regained his freedom. Baquaqua also traveled to Haiti before settling down in Chatham, Canada West (Ontario).
Langfur, Hal. The Forbidden Lands: Colonial Identity, Frontier Violence, and the Persistence of Brazil’s Eastern Indians, 1750–1830. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Innovative study of the frontier violence that occurred when the Portuguese Crown attempted to curtail gold smuggling and tax evasion in eastern Minas Gerais by making indigenous lands off-limits to settlers. Langfur finds a “cult of terror” created by the interethnic violence.
Landers, Jane, and Barry M. Robinson, eds. Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives: Blacks in Colonial Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006. Contains important articles on slave protests and revolts in New Granada and Brazil; citizenship discussions in Argentina; and African identity in Cuba. Essays are accompanied with primary sources translated into English.
Kraay, Hendrik. Race, State, and Armed Forces in Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790’s–1840’s. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Kraay takes a holistic approach toward the military of postindependence Brazil, specifically the Bahia region; the role of the militia as a tool of national liberation is discussed.
Klein, Herb. “The Social and Economic Integration of Portuguese Immigrants in Brazil in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” Journal of Latin American Studies 23.2 (1991): 309–337. DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X00014012 Empirically rich study of the Portuguese background, regional origins, regional distribution in Brazil, the social traits (sex, marital status, occupation, literacy, etc.) of the Portuguese compared to other immigrants at arrival, and measures of adaptation (land and business-ownership, and rates of exogamy, illegitimacy, criminality, and savings), also in comparison to other groups.
Karasch, Mary. Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Pioneering study on slavery in Rio de Janeiro and the role of ethnic bonding in the Americas. Based on careful and exhaustive archival work, stresses the role of West Central Africa–born slaves in Brazil. Chapters deal with religious life, cultural practices, resistance, and manumission.
Karash, Mary C. Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro (1808–1850). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. The most in-depth study of slavery in Rio de Janeiro, this book places emphasis on daily life, ethnic and social diversity, and forms and conditions of work in place at the time. It also shows the rise of a rich Afro-carioca culture different from that of the other localities of Brazil.
Klein, Herbert S. “The Trade in African Slaves to Rio de Janeiro, 1795–1811.” Journal of African History 10.4 (1969): 533–549 DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700009695 This pioneer study on the slave trade points to the appalling conditions and high mortality rate resulting from transportation of slaves from Angola and Benguela to the port of Rio de Janeiro. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Marques, Alfredo Pinheiro. Portugal and the European Discovery of America: Christopher Columbus and the Portuguese. Lisbon: Portuguese State Mint, 1992. A Portuguese government-sponsored publication reviewing the Portuguese discoveries in the late 15th century and Columbus’s knowledge of and participation in them.
Lugar, Catherine. “Merchants.” In Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America. Edited by Susan Socolow and Louise Hoberman, 47–76. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. Catherine Lugar presents an overview of mercantile communities in different cities of Iberian America from the 16th to the 18th century. The author draws on her own research on colonial merchants of Bahia, as well as on research of other scholars on the field for the cases of Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Lima. This article is well suited for undergraduate reading assignments.
Lovejoy, Paul E. “The Urban Background of Enslaved Muslims in the Americas.” Slavery and Abolition 26.3 (2005): 349–376. Explores the urban background of Muslim slaves and how it affected experiences and expectations in the Americas. Shows how skills such as craft specialization, literacy, and political and social consciousness made it easy to adjust to life in the New World.
Heywood, Linda. “The Angolan–Afro-Brazilian Cultural Connections.” Slavery and Abolition 20.1 (1999): 9–23. Explores the religious continuities and recreations between the Kingdom of Kongo, Angola, and Brazil. Brings the discussion of African influences in Afro-Brazilian religions into the South Atlantic, challenging the idea of a Yoruba predominance.
Herlin, Susan. “Brazil and the Commercialization of Kongo, 1840–1870.” In Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil During the Era of Slavery. Edited by José Curto and Paul Lovejoy, 261–283. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004. Shows the expansion of Brazilian traders and capital on the Kingdom of Kongo in West Central Africa, during the era of illegal slave exports, and its importance in the transition to legitimate trade.
Hawthorne, Walter. “Being now, as it were, one family”: Shipmate Bonding on the Slave Vessel Emilia, in Rio de Janeiro, and Throughout the Atlantic World.” Luso-Brazilian Review 45.1 (2008): 53–77. Explores shipmate ties developed among African slaves across the Atlantic, which overshadow previous identities. Argues that the Atlantic is the stage for the creation of new social ties, rather than a space of social death.
Hawthorne, Walter. From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Contribution to the debate on the role of Africans in the societies in the New World. Focuses on rice cultivation in Maranhão, Brazil, and the knowledge brought from Upper Guinea. Through a careful analysis of historical evidence, Hawthorne demonstrates that Africans and Amerindians influenced agriculture in colonial Brazil.
Hanson, Carl A. “Monopoly and Contraband in the Portuguese Tobacco Trade, 1625–1702.” Luso-Brazilian Review 19 (Winter 1982): 149–168. This article examines tobacco production, distribution, and regulation in Brazil. The author pays special attention to mercantilist policies regarding the tobacco trade and emphasizes the prevalence of smuggling within and beyond the realms of the Portuguese Empire. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Hanson, Carl A. Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal, 1668–1703. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981. This work analyzes in detail the changes in the Portuguese mercantilist system, and the political and economic tensions between merchants and nobles and the clergy. The author emphasizes the significant role of the commercial groups in Portuguese society, specifically the role of New Christians. Hanson examines the Crown attempts to stimulate colonial trade between Asia, Africa, and Brazil. The author draws on Portuguese sources.
Graham, Maria. Journal of a Voyage to Brazil and Residence There during Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. The daily life and architecture of several cities along the coast are described. As far as Rio de Janeiro is concerned, not only its inhabitants and its urban and natural landscape, but also political facts of importance for the independence of Brazil, are described. Excellent drawings accompany the text.
Graham, Richard. Independence in Latin America: A Comparative Approach. Studies in World Civilization. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994. At less than two hundred pages, a very concise overview of the independence movements against Spanish, Portuguese, and French rulers. Argues that, principally, economic factors, conjectural circumstances, and active resistance from native peoples helped Spanish America’s elites resist European domination. First published 1974.
Gomes, Flávio dos Santos. “Africans and Slave Marriages in Eighteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro.” The Americas 67.2 (2010): 153–184. DOI: 10.1353/tam.2010.0022 This article addresses the polemical theme of matrimony and godparent relations between Negroes and mulattos and between slaves and free men. Such alliances could act as strategies for social ascension and bring together people of different status. The study also proves that whole families of slaves were actually not so rare in slave-owning society. Available online by subscription.
Furtado, Júnia Ferreira. “Tropical Empiricism: Making Medical Knowledge in Colonial Brazil.” In Science and Empire in the Atlantic World. Edited by James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew, 127–152. New York: Routledge, 2008. Treats the development of natural histories of Brazil, particularly in terms of materia medica, from the more traditionally scholarly productions of the Dutch period to the publications of 18th-century barber-surgeons. Identifies the common threads of the incorporation of local knowledge, direct observation, global movement of people and books, and Luso-Brazilian participation in a European community of scholars.
Florentino, Manolo. “The Slave Trade, Colonial Markets, and Slave Families in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, ca. 1790–ca. 1830.” In Extending The Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. Edited by David Eltis and David Richardson, 275–312. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. From 1808 onward, there was a notable increase in the number of African slaves in Rio de Janeiro. Dependence on the slave trade had its origins in the significant entry of adult men, rather than women and children. In spite of the inability of this population to reproduce, the predominance of Africans threatened the crioulos in the slave communities.
Flory, Rae, and David Smith. “Bahian Merchants and Planters in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries.” Hispanic American Historical Review 58.4 (November 1978): 571–594. DOI: 10.2307/2513341 This article examines the social and economic role of merchants in the city of Salvador. The authors compare the elites of Salvador, specifically merchants and planters, considering origins, marriage patterns, political participation in institutions, and patterns of association. The authors argue that there is no rigid division between groups in the upper Bahian elites. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Ferreira, Roquinaldo. “Atlantic Microhistories: Mobility, Personal Ties, and Slaving in the Black Atlantic World (Angola and Brazil).” In Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic. Edited by Nancy Priscilla Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca, and David H. Treece, 99–128. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Focuses on different slave traders based in Benguela. Explores circulation of people and connections between Benguela and Rio de Janeiro.
Eltis, David, and David Richardson, eds. Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Voyages Database. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. Includes essays on: the earliest Iberian Atlantic slave trade into the Caribbean by Antonio de Almeida Mendes; Africans in Cuba by Oscar Grandío Moráguez; and the slave trade to various Brazilian ports by Daniel Barros Domingues da Silva, David Eltis, Alexandre Vieira Ribeiro, and Manolo Florentino. One should also consult Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, which is frequently updated.
Ebert, Christopher. Between Empires: Brazilian Sugar in the Early Atlantic Economy, 1550–1630. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2008. Argues that sugar produced in Brazil was traded in the wide Atlantic world in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish merchants transported sugar and connected Brazilian ports to the Atlantic islands of Madeira and São Tomé.
Dutra, Francis A. Military Orders in the Early Modern Portuguese World: The Orders of Christ, Santiago, and Avis. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006. Selection of Dutra’s important essays on early modern Portuguese military orders (which also expanded  India and Brazil), whose membership was highly prized as status symbols and because of their employment of purity-of-blood statutes. By 1551 the military orders were integrated into the Portuguese Crown, making the king the most important landowner in the kingdom, while also providing him with a resource of loyal knights. Based on archival research.
Donovan, Bill M. “Changing Perceptions of Social Deviance: Gypsies in Early Modern Portugal and Brazil.” Journal of Social History 26.1 (1992): 33–53. Examines the early arrival of gypsies to Brazil in the 17th century; the deportation of gypsy communities to the colony by the Portuguese Crown after 1718; their continued existence as an identifiable cultural group in the face of local prejudice; and how the slave/free, black/white divide afforded gypsies a higher level of integration into local society than in Europe. DOI: 10.1353/jsh/26.1.33
Curto, José C. Enslaving Spirits: The Portuguese Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and Its Hinterland, c. 1550–1830. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 2004. This important study draws attention to the trade in alcohol in Angola. The approach stresses the role of Brazilian traders in the slave trade in the South Atlantic.
Curto, José C. “Luso-Brazilian Alcohol and the Legal Slave Trade at Benguela and its Hinterland, c. 1617–1830.” In Négoce Blanc en Afrique Noire: L‘évolution du commerce à longue distance en Afrique noire du 18e au 20e siècles. Edited by H. Bonin and M. Cahen, 351–369. Paris: Publications de la Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 2001. Explores the role of the Brazilian produced cachaça, sugarcane- distilled alcohol, in the expansion of slave trade in Benguela, in West Central Africa. Demonstrates the South Atlantic connections between the two Portuguese colonies and how slave labor became fundamental in the production of alcohol used in exchange for more captives on the coast of Africa.
Duncan, T. Bentley. Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verdes in Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. This book examines in detail the role of the Atlantic islands in Portuguese commerce. The author convincingly demonstrates the importance of commodity production in the islands, the existence of interisland trade circuits, and the strong commercial connections linking the Portuguese Atlantic islands to West Africa, the Caribbean, Brazil, and above all to Portugal. The book contains a wealth of data presented in tables and maps.
Barbosa, Rosana. Immigration and Xenophobia: Portuguese Immigrants in Early 19th Century Rio de Janeiro. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009. Deals with Portuguese immigration to Rio de Janeiro between Brazilian independence in 1822 and the middle of the 19th century, the social characteristics of the arrivals, their efforts to adapt to the new environment, the local elite’s views, and popular Lusophobia.
Barbosa, Rosana. Immigration and Xenophobia: Portuguese Immigrants in Early 19th Century Rio de Janeiro. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009. Study complements the work of Kristen Schultz by focusing on the nonelite immigrants who accompanied the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro in 1808 and the resentment they faced from both locals and the enslaved population.
Barman, Roderick. Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 1798–1852. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988. An analysis of the mechanisms responsible for the political unity of Brazil based on the plans proposed by Souza Coutinho and the installing of the Portuguese Court in Rio. The book investigates the construction of Brazilian identity, the institutions created by the Portuguese government, and how they served to keep the state national.
Bauss, Rudolph. “Rio de Janeiro: The Rise of Colonial Brazil´s Dominant Emporium, 1777–1808.” PhD diss., Tulane University, 1977. This thesis sets out to analyze the economic expansion of Brazil’s Center-South in order to understand the predominance of Rio de Janeiro as the main political and commercial center between 1777 and 1808. To this end, the work resorts to an analysis of trade balances and the correspondence of the viceroys.
Boxer, Charles. Salvador Correa de Sa and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602–1686. London: Greenwood, 1976. A classic on the Portuguese Atlantic Empire. The author examines the career of Correa and the longstanding political and economic influence exerted by the Correia de Sa family through participation in the imperial administration as well as in mercantile and entrepreneurial endeavors. Boxer analyzes  the interconnection between Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Luanda. He also shows how  Rio de Janeiro gained  strength in the political game of the Empire when the Dutch were expelled from Angola and gradually became a core part of the trading network in the southern Atlantic. Luso-Brazilians played a leading role in this episode by organizing and financing the enterprise against the Dutch, practically without much say from Lisbon.
Boxer, C. R. The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695–1750: Growing Pains of a Colonial Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. A panorama of the discovery of gold mines and the consequent immigration of Portuguese, Portuguese-Brazilians, and slaves to Brazil’s Center-South. Such events led to the political and economic axis shifting from Bahia and Pernambuco to Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.
Brown, Larissa Virginia. “Internal Commerce in a Colonial Economy: Rio de Janeiro and Its Hinterland, 1790–1822.” PhD diss., University of Virginia, 1986. This work shows the importance of the domestic market in Rio de Janeiro and surroundings in the period prior to independence. Not only was the city a large hub for consumers, but it also acted as a metropolis for Brazil and for peripheral ports on the map of overseas trading.
Campbell, Gwyn. “Africa, the Indian Ocean and the ‘Early Modern’: Historiographical Conventions and Problems.” In Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honor of Anthony Hopkins. Edited by Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, 81–92. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic, 2011. In this characteristically feisty essay the author, director of the Indian Ocean World Centre at McGill University in Montreal and a historian of Madagascar, critically analyzes what he identifies as the Eurocentric tradition of employing the term “early modern” in studies of Africa and the Indian Ocean World.
Cross, Harry E. “Commerce and Orthodoxy: A Spanish Response to Portuguese Commercial Penetration in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1580–1640.” The Americas 35.2 (1978): 151–167. DOI: 10.2307/980901 Describes the legal and illegal movements of Portuguese into colonial Peru during the peak of its silver boom, the degree to which they and their descendants came to dominate colonial trade, the efforts by Spanish merchants to have the imperial government expel their competition, and the resulting involvement of the Inquisition in the process.
Candido, Mariana. “Different Slave Journeys: Enslaved African Seamen on Board of Portuguese Ship, c. 1760–1820s.” Slavery and Abolition 31.3 (2010): 395–409. Explores the role of enslaved Africans who worked as sailors, soldiers, and translators on transatlantic voyages. Discusses the importance of African crew members on Portuguese ships connecting the coast of Africa and Brazil.
Alden, Dauril. Royal Government in Colonial Brazil: With Special Reference to the Administration of the Marquis of Lavradio, Viceroy, 1769–1779. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Although this work does not address the city directly, it does offer an acute analysis of the government of the Marquis of Lavradio, an important viceroy of the State of Brazil. Rio was the capital from where economic reforms were set in motion, wars architected against the Spanish, and measures introduced to restore finances. The geography of the administration deserves special mention.
Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Argues that the Spanish and Portuguese Empires responded to the pressures of war and merchant capitalism in the 18th century, which led to a transformation of the bonds of loyalty, leading to independence as empire was no longer a viable model of sovereignty. Adelman analyzes this process in conjunction in the  Spanish and Portuguese empires, focusing on the River Plate, Gran Colombia, and Brazil. Explores the role of the commercial elites in the colonies and their links to the transatlantic slave trade. Places an emphasis on the contingency and complexity of the path to independence.
Alden, Dauril. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Comprehensive global study of the rise of the Jesuit order from its establishment in Portugal and its expansion in that country and beyond from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Discusses the organization, finances, and policies of the Jesuits from Brazil to Angola, India to Japan. Chapter 9 deals with Jesuit enterprises in Brazil, chapter 20 with migrations within the Portuguese Atlantic motivated or forced by the Society of Jesus and chapter 21 discusses the Jesuit trading network and economic activities under the Portuguese padroado linking Lisbon, the East Indies and Brazil . The book is a  good example of the significant increase, as well as newer trends, in the historiography of the Society during roughly its first two centuries.
Alden, Dauril. “Vicissitudes of Trade in the Portuguese Atlantic Empire during the First Half of the Eighteenth Century.” Americas 32.2 (October 1975): 282–291. In his analysis of the papers of Portuguese merchant Francisco Pineiro, Dauril Alden examines the strategies, difficulties, and characteristics of trade between Portugal, Africa, Asia, Brazil, and Rio de la Plata during the apex of gold production in Brazil. The author emphasizes the importance of intercolonial trade circuits, credit, and information networks, as well as transimperial trade as integral part of colonial commercial enterprises. Available online for purchase or by subscription. DOI: 10.2307/980663
Andrews, George R. Afro-Latin America, 1800–2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Important study that discusses the history of Afro–Latin American population during the 19th and 20th centuries. It covers slavery, abolition, and transition to freedom, new ideas of citizenship, whitening policies, the growing black movements, and the current situations. Comprehensive in its coverage of Latin America, focuses on the countries with largest black population (Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, and Panama).
Araujo, Ana Lucia. Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010. Addresses the uniqueness of the South Atlantic. Compares public memory of the slave trade and slavery in Brazil and Benin and examines the role of both communities of Afro-Brazilians.
Arbell, Mordehay. The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean: The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2002. Detailed description of Sephardic settlement in the French Caribbean (Martinique and Guadalupe, Haiti, Cayenne), Dutch (Curacao, Suriname, St. Eustatius, Pomeroon), British (Jamaica, Barbados, St. Nevis, Tobago), and Danish (Virgin Islands) colonies, on the liberated Spanish colonies, and on the Venezuelan coastal town of Tucacas.
Ecclesiastical Sources for Slave Societies. Digital collection collected by a team led by historian Jane Landers, from Vanderbilt University. Contains parish records from Cuba, Brazil, and Colombia. Original documents are available online for consultation.
Assunção, Matthias Rohrig. Capoeira: A History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art. New York: Routledge, 2005. Innovative study on martial arts that takes the Atlantic as a unit, exploring the influence of Central African combat games and competitive dances in the Afro-Brazilian martial arts. Shows how the practice of capoeira changed in the early 20th century, incorporating new elements as a result of new dynamics in the Atlantic world.
Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record. Website that contains approximately 1,235 images regarding the capture, trade, and transportation of slaves in the African continent as well as their life experiences in the Americas. An important number of its collections deal with the slave trade in the South Atlantic.
Baily, Samuel L., and Eduardo J. Míguez, eds. Mass Migration to Modern Latin America. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003. The first part of this book deals with transnational/comparative cases: Spanish emigration to Cuba and Argentina, South Europeans to South Atlantic regions, Portuguese to the Americas, Italians to New York and Buenos Aires, Europeans in the latter city and Montevideo, and Japanese in Peru and Brazil. The other two parts deal with specific cases in Argentina and Brazil.
Bailyn, Bernard. Atlantic History: Concept and Contours. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. One of the leading books, in English, that proposes an Atlantic history that encompasses the whole ocean basin. Yet, this study mainly focuses on British North America, neglecting the South Atlantic.
Bangert, William V. A History of the Society of Jesus. 2d ed. St. Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986. A detailed study of the international Jesuit order up to the late 20th century, this is the most comprehensive one-volume history of the Society in English. Xavier’s life and work are well highlighted within the context of the early, expanding Society.
Wey Gómez, Nicolás. The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. A recent work showing that Columbus viewed the tropics as a habitable zone—as the Portuguese were demonstrating in his time—and as a zone ripe for European colonization.
Topik, Steven, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr L. Frank. From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. From Silver to Cocaine is a well-crafted compilation of articles examining main commodity chains that have marked the economic history of Latin America. The authors examined different commodity chains, paying attention to the regional context as well as the transatlantic scenario. Articles of special interest for the period between c. 1500 and c. 1750 focus on the commodity chains of silver, cacao, indigo, cochineal, and tobacco.
Soares, Mariza de Carvalho. People of Faith: Slavery and African Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. This study on African ethnicities, slavery and brotherhoods of free Negroes, and slaves in Rio de Janeiro analyzes the norms and sociability of the brotherhood of Saint Elesbão and Saint Iphigenia, underscoring the religiosity and identity of the Maki ethnic group.
Soares, Mariza de Carvalho. People of Faith: Slavery and African Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. This study on African ethnicities, slavery and brotherhoods of free Negroes, and slaves in Rio de Janeiro analyzes the norms and sociability of the brotherhood of Saint Elesbão and Saint Iphigenia, underscoring the religiosity and identity of the Maki ethnic group.
Hahner, June E. “Jacobinos versus Galegos: Urban Radicals versus Portuguese Immigrants in Rio de Janeiro in the 1890s.” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 18.2 (1976): 125–154. DOI: 10.2307/174772 Focuses on the activities of a radical ultranationalistic group that styled itself as Jacobins against Portuguese immigrants, disdainfully referred to as Galegos, who made up more than one-fifth of the city’s 523,000 inhabitants in 1890 and controlled much of its commerce.
Hawthorne, Walter. From Africa to Brazil: Culture, Identity, and an Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1830. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Contribution to the debate on the role of Africans in the societies in the New World. Focuses on rice cultivation in Maranhão, Brazil, and the knowledge brought from Upper Guinea. Through a careful analysis of historical evidence, Hawthorne demonstrates that Africans and Amerindians influenced agriculture in colonial Brazil.
MacLachlan, Colin. “The Indian Directorate: Forced Acculturation in Portuguese America (1757–1799).” The Americas 28.4 (1972): 357–387. DOI: 10.2307/980202 Study of Pombal’s effort to centralize royal control over an institution known as the Diretorio dos Indios and thus take some power from the religious authorities who had previously controlled Indian labor.
Kubler, George, and Martin Soria. Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500–1800. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1959. Rich overview of art and architecture in Spain and Portugal and their New World possessions. Includes an interesting discussion on how Spain and Latin American artists were able to absorb influences from Italy and northern Europe without losing their own native identity and traditions.
Pijnig, Ernst. “Controlling Contraband: Mentality, Economy and Society in 18th Century Rio de Janeiro.” PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1997. This study examines the mechanics, participants, and dispute over regulation regarding trade, in relation to the social values of Rio de Janeiro colonial society. Controlling contraband was a complex process of negotiation between social groups and interests. The author presents detailed information on the goods, methods, and the routes of contraband trade in the South Atlantic.





Abel, Christopher, and Colin M. Lewis. Latin America, Economic Imperialism, and the State: The Political Economy of the External Connection from Independence to the Present. London and Dover, NH: Athlone, 1985. Collective work that compiles eighteen contributions divided into five sections. The first section, theoretical in nature, discusses the dependentist theses, while sections 2 and 3 deal with the economic history of the 19th century through both issue-based (protectionism, railways, industrialization) and national (Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay, and the Dominican Republic) frameworks.
Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. Slavery, Freedom, and Abolition in Latin America and the Atlantic World. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2011. Addresses the late abolitions of slavery (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil) in a comparative perspective. Useful to beginner and advanced students.
Barman, Roderick. Citizen Emperor: Pedro II and the Making of Brazil, 1825–1891. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. An impressive, well-documented account of Pedro II and the political structures he perfected in monarchist Brazil. Chapter 7, which focuses on the Paraguayan War, argues that Pedro II was less an expansionist than a man interested in maintaining the general peace. Once he was antagonized by Solano López’s adventure in Mato Grosso, however, the Emperor proved an unbending adversary and eschewed multiple opportunities for peace negotiations because he felt his honor offended.

Warren, Harris Gaylord. “Roberto Adolfo Chodasiewicz: A Polish Soldier of Fortune in the Paraguayan War.” Americas 41.3 (1985): 1–19.
DOI: 10.2307/1007097
Chodasiewicz served as a military engineer in both the Argentine and Brazilian armies during the war. Warren offers a short biographical account, noting Major Chodaesiewicz’s birth and early life in Poland as well as his participation in the Crimean and US Civil Wars before his arrival in South America in 1865. The Major was an enthusiastic supporter of using observation balloons to scout Paraguayan positions near Humaitá in 1867.
Beattie, Peter M. The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 1864–1945. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2001.
DOI: 10.1215/9780822381105
Study of how military labor was transformed from a coercive system of impressment to a free system. Studies how this change helped to build the Brazilian state and strengthen Brazilian nationalism. Chapter 2 addresses Brazilian mobilization during the Paraguayan campaign, arguing that the war alone did not affect postwar social structures.
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Kraay, Hendrik. “Patriotic Mobilization in Brazil: The Zuavos and Other Black Companies in the Paraguayan War, 1865–70.” In I Die with My Country. Edited by Hendrik Kraay and Thomas Whigham, 61–80. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Argues that black Brazilian men were often eager participants during the early years of the war, willing to fight for their country and Emperor. Concludes, however, that they found few opportunities upon the cessation of hostilities. Agrees with the assessment of Beattie that the war did little to reshape the Brazilian military or society.
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Moritz Schwarcz, Lilia, and John Gledson. The Emperor’s Beard: Dom Pedro II and His Tropical Monarchy in Brazil. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.

Considers how images of power helped to consolidate Dom Pedro II’s rule in Brazil. During the war, the Emperor dressed in a military uniform in order to show he was a military hero and “Volunteer Number One” in the Brazilian Military.
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Wiebke, Ipsen. “Patrícias, Patriarchy, and Popular Demobilization: Gender and Elite Hegemony in Brazil at the End of the Paraguayan War.” Hispanic American Historical Review 92.2 (May 2012): 303–330.
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-1545701
Moves beyond the traditional Brazilian historiography that explains how the war shaped the nation at the end of hostilities—with the abolition of slavery, militarism, or the end of monarchy. Explains the conservative nature of elite women as they moved toward a more public role, yet embraced patriarchy. Explains how elite women sought to differentiate themselves from lower-class women.

Gratz, George A. “The Brazilian Imperial Navy Ironclads, 1865–1874.” Warship (1999–2000): 140–162.

The article is a description with many images of the various ironclad ships ordered by the Brazilian and Paraguayan military in Europe before the war. Also includes descriptions of the careers of each during the war. Describes the attempts of the Brazilian navy to build ironclads of their own.
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Laing, E. A. M. “Naval Operations in the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–70.” Mariner’s Mirror 54 (1968): 253–280.
DOI: 10.1080/00253359.1968.10659446
Useful summary account of the naval war. Contains helpful maps and a clear summary of Brazilian and Paraguayan naval power throughout the war.






Adelman, Jeremy. Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.

Placing South American independence movements within their Atlantic context, the author focuses on the issue of sovereignty, presenting Brazil as a counterpoint to the Spanish American experience. The book includes a discussion of slavery in the articulation of a South Atlantic system and its role in Brazilian independence.
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Assunção, Matthias Röhrig. Capoeira: The History of an Afro-Brazilian Martial Art. London: Routledge, 2005.

Overview of the history of capoeira, tracing its Atlantic roots and discussing controversies in the prevailing literature on the subject. Includes a chapter on slave capoeira in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850.
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Dean, Warren. With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Based on an impressive quantity of documentary and secondary sources, and informed by other fields of knowledge, Dean presents a sweeping, ambitious history of Brazil from an environmental perspective. His focus on the Atlantic forest affords an understanding of the relationship between different human populations with the forest, as the environment became more deeply enmeshed in the Atlantic economy.
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Metcalf, Alida C. Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.

Covering the first century of Portuguese America, the author studies the role and structure of cultural mediation in the colonial process, placing coastal Brazil within the context of similar processes throughout the Portuguese Atlantic.
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Schultz, Kirsten. Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Based on extensive research, the book examines the processes set off by the establishment of the Portuguese monarchy in Rio de Janeiro, arguing that “the politics of representative government and national citizenship displaced the politics of absolute monarchy and vassalage.”
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Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Covering nearly three hundred years of Atlantic history, the book introduces many new perspectives on land, labor, patterns of slaveholding, and the active role of African and creole slaves and freedmen in plantation societies.

Horne, Gerald. The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

Extensively researched, the book explores the involvement of US interests in the illegal slave trade to Brazil and Cuba in the mid-19th century. Includes information on the participation of Portuguese ships and ship captains in the clandestine trade.
Karasch, Mary. Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Exhaustively researched, classic study of the multiple characteristics and activities involved in urban slavery in Rio de Janeiro during the peak years of the African slave trade. Includes detailed information on African ethnic identities in the New World.

Schenia, Robert L. Latin America’s Wars, Vol. 1, The Age of the Caudillo, 1791–1899. Washington, DC: Potomac, 2003.

The best one-volume study of the military history of Latin America after the end of colonial rule and the beginning of the 20th century. The author describes the evolution of Latin American military systems, as well as their involvement in politics as well as war. The irregular nature of conflicts, from conventional wars against major powers to suppression of Native tribes, is a constant theme of the work.

Gregor, Thomas. Anxious Pleasures: The Sexual Lives of an Amazonian People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Pioneering ethnography of myth, ritual, and everyday sexual lives of the Mehinaku people of Brazil. Emphasizes internal contradictions as well as similarities to Western societies, with the appearance of anxieties expressed emotionally and sexually. Gives attention to women and men and to the relationship of sex to food in the culture.
Schwartz, Stuart B. Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1835. Cambridge Latin American Studies 52. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
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One of the best books available to see the deep penetration of the plantation as an economic institution and a set of particular technologies on the society as a whole. Superbly researched and beautifully written. Reprinted as recently as 2004.
Dean, Warren. With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
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A major work that has become the definitive work on this and related topics, showing how agricultural policy, technology, and capitalist economic expansion largely destroyed one of the largest and most diverse rainforests outside the Amazon.
Miller, Shawn William. Fruitless Trees: Portuguese Conservation and Brazil’s Colonial Timber. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
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A careful and detailed analysis that shows how colonial officials attempted to control the depredations of the expansion of agriculture in Brazil’s Atlantic forest, attempting to shape the course of agricultural development without destroying the timber resource that had been so highly prized in Brazil’s export economy.
Rogers, Thomas D. The Deepest Wounds: A Labor and Environmental History of Sugar in Northeast Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
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An excellent review of the vast literature on cane in northeastern Brazil, with a strong focus on the implications of technological change, including original research on recent innovations. Good literature review and update to begin an examination of the enormous scholarly production on this subject.
Stein, Stanley J. Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1900. Harvard Historical Studies 69. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957.
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Long a fundamental source for understanding the development and spread of coffee plantations over a progressively degraded landscape. Meticulous research and trenchant writing. Republished as recently as 1985 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Miller, Shawn William. An Environmental History of Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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This work synthesizes the research on Latin American environmental history following a standard political chronology. Starting with the pre-Columbian world, it follows ecological changes unleashed by Europeans in the 16th century and examines the opening of ecosystems for development upon independence, ending with a survey of the urban environment, pollution, population growth, and the economic penetration of the most isolated habitats of the continent. Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Peru receive the most coverage.


Blake, Stanley. The Vigorous Core of Our Nationality: Race and Regional Identity in Northeastern Brazil. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011.
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Examines construction of Northeastern regional identity by politicians, intellectuals, medical doctors, and other urban professionals from 1888 to 1940, highlighting ideas put into practice in state building. Focuses primarily on Pernambuco.