Six hundred, six hundred glorious pages of fascinating history of Brazil, probably my favourite country in the world. Schwarcz and Starling have detailed the history of Brazil, up to the more recent governments following the military dictatorship.

As soon as I saw this I wanted to read it, and I took some time to go through it, savouring as much as I could. Even after 600 pages I did not want it to end, and it’s not often you can say that about a non-fiction book. The chronological progress through the book, gives context to the formation of the country and early exploration by the Portuguese, the invasions from other European powers, and the settlement of this diverse land.

From settlement came Sugar cultivation, then coffee, enabling the explosion of the slave trade, which Brazil was the last country to abolish in 1888. By that time, an estimated 4.9 million slaves had been brought to Brazil from Africa. The owners were brutal with them, and the fear that they were outnumbered drove them to even more brutality to maintain control. The book builds up a story, with writings, and pictures from the time from various people, with about a hundred pages of footnotes from the main thread.

At first it seems that a large portion of the book is taken up with the slave industry and how it powered the Sugar and later coffee production that drove Brazil onwards, but you start to realise the impact that slavery has had on the country, how the dividing lines solidified between the mixture of races.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that the same mixture of races, unequalled in any other country, generated a society that was defined by mixed marriages, rhythms, arts, sports, aromas, cuisine and literary expression. It could be said that the ‘Brazilian soul’ is multicoloured. The variety of Brazilian faces, features, ways of thinking and seeing the country are evidence of how deeply rooted the mixture of races is, and of how it has produced new cultures born from it’s hybrid nature and variety of experiences. Cultural diversity is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the country, deeply marked and conditioned by ‘separation’ but also by ‘mixture’ resulting from the long proces of mesticagem.

The Portuguese crown arrived, after a long time dithering and procrastinating in the face of Napoleon’s threats and England’s overtures, and for a while Brazil became the principal seat and Nation of the Portuguese empire, a position it’s ‘nobility’ did not want to lose. When Independence was declared Brazil took some solid, and some faltering steps towards nationhood, in no small part thanks to Getulio Vargas in his two stints as President.

Once it had been created and built up, the armed forces were always lurking in the background and came to the fore to take control of Brazil for a dictatorship that became more savage the longer it lasted but which would eventually cede to a civilian government.

Brazil is a tremendous book, it details in an easy to read yet still compelling and fascinating way the history context of the country, without sensationalising or preaching, merely by telling the story you begin to understand the shape of the society and the politics. Interestingly Schwarcz and Starling paint a small picture of optimism at the end of the book, which I suspect has been slightly dampened more recently. I am hoping that there is as detailed and wonderful history of this period of time in the future.
(blog review here)

I love a country biography

Writing could be just a bit more dynamic—if I had to read the phrase "and a te deum was sung" one more time I was liable to scream—but the grand historical scale of this makes for an undeniable achievement. Went in looking to fill in a bit of a blind spot, came out feeling broadly well-briefed: not much more you can ask.

a standard liberal history, that gets less interesting the closer it comes to the liberal democracy of its imagined imminent future.

This book was an excellent, yet often critical, snapshot of Brazil's history. It was a delight to read the history of a place written in the book's narrative style.