Cruzeiro do Sul, A History of Brazil's Half-Millennium: Vol 1 New World Epic |
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Cruzeiro do Sul, A History of Brazil's Half-Millennium: Vol 1 New World Epic
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by James Hufferd
Sales Rank: 1221676
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List Price: $38.50
$38.50
At Amazon
on 9-15-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 584 pages
Published by: AuthorHouse May 11, 2005
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 142080278X
ISBN 13 Number: 978-1420802788
Book Dimensions:
10.7 x 8 x 1.4 inches
Weighs: 2.8 pounds
Reader Reviews
While the United States has been preoccupied with wars in Europe, Asia, and the Mideast in the 20th century, it has given scant attention to the countries of South America. One of the emerging giants preparing itself for first-line entry into global politics and the world economy is Brazil, a country larger than the coterminous USA with a populaton of 187 million and vast resources. Napoleon Bonaparte said geography determines history. Now a geographer has researched and written a new narrative history of Brazil. Dr. James Hufferd, a research historian from Adel, Iowa, has written this two volume series "Cruzeiro do Sul--A history of Brazil's Half-Millennium," amply covering the first 500 years of Brazil, from 1500 to the present. Hufferd was twice a visiting scholar at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and is widely traveled in Brazil and neighboring countries. He is also the author of two previous books. In the forword to Volume I, Professor Stuart B. Schwartz of Yale University, the dean of Brazil historians, refers to two writers of Brazilian history in the 19th century. The first is the English poet and author Robert Southey who produced a three-volume history up to the early 19th century. Schwartz also refers to a mid-19th century German traveler and naturalist, Karl Frederich Philipp von Martius who had written an excellent description of his travels in Brazil. Since the 19th century, 186 years ago, no scholar has written a narrative history of Brazil in English. This is Dr. Hufferd's accomplishment of twenty years of research in English, Portuguese, and the study of archival materials on location in Brazil. Schwartz states, "This two-volume work captures the complexities of Brazil's history and gives special attention to the physical space and geographical features that have influenced Brazil. Hufferd now joins the distinguished company of Southey and Martius as a 'Brazilianist' anxious to bring his knowledge and love to Brazil to a wider world." Volume I, "New World Epic," emphasizes the early struggles of Brazil up to the early 1800s. I will examine Volume I, "New World Epic," and touch on several of the wide range of subjects covered in the book. The vast range of topics addressed by Hufferd may be suggested as answers to the following questions: * What are the factors that propelled a very small country like Portugal to colonize and then retain control of a vast area in South American to the present in that, today more people speak Portuguese than Spanish in South America? * What are the various theories of the origins of the 76 indigenous tribes in Brazil and to what extent were the 76 tribes in Brazil by 1500 lost to the merging of African, native, and European diseases? * How did the Portuguese (the Brazilians) hold off the French, who attacked the area for seventy years? How did they deal with the Spanish and British encroachment and how did they resist and defeat the Dutch occupation? * What was the importance of slave trade and the impact of slavery in Brazil and how did the slave trade operate? * How did the western "gold rush" become a disaster with the gold ending up with the Portuguese monarch and much of it in the hands of the British? * What was the Jewish connection to early Brazil? * How did Brazil become the number one Catholic country in the world? * Who were the individuals in the first 300 years who carried out this great venture in interior expansion? This book offers line illustrations (Volumne I contains twenty full-page illustrations including early maps and paintings of early leaders and tribes). The reader should tack up a modern map on the wall and follow the action. With allusion to earlier roots, the narrative starts in Portugal in the 1300s and explores the development of Portugal into a superpower after 1470. By 1500 the Portuguese have landed in what the ancients called "Branden or Brazil," with the arrival of Pedro Alvares Cabral. The narrative takes us from before the discovery of Brazil to 1810. Hufferd uses a wide brush to paint broad landscapes. However, he does not neglect details and these details are the heart of the book. The individuals who carried out the expansion into the interior, their conflicts with the natives, the incidents of battles with the French, the Spanish, the Dutch and the British are described in detail. The numbers of leaders who went into the interior and brought back thousands of natives in captivity are carefully referenced. The outcomes are alway evaluated with the analysis of a historian. The author lets us know where and when there are conflicts of dates or accounts of events in sources but never lets the analysis interfere with the advancement of the narrative. The author's descriptions ofter border on humor and he never fails to point out the ironies. For example he gives us Columbus who had trouble with cosmology. "Columbus believed that the world was shaped like a pear, or perhaps more to the point, like a woman's [...], the [...] on the site of the earthly paradise, which he theorized would lie somewhere in the south of China, a region thereby positioned literally closer to heaven." Jesuits came early to Brazil and there were expectations of a Biblical Paradise. There was an idealist expectation of respositories of a forgotten Eden; however, the Jesuits were disappointed when the actual natives appeared to be flawed, poor, and indecipherable. There was the problem of nakedness of native women. Ironically, the Jesuits were successful in leading Brazil to become a Catholic state, but the intermarriage of the conquerors with the natives led to the variety of mixed marriages of today. Parallel incidents with U.S. history are numerous. The gold rush, slavery, exploitation and imperial expansion by the colonizing countries, conquest of a continent from the natives, the attempted invasions from France, England, Spain and the colonization by the Dutch are similar themes. Both Brazil and the American colonies needed foreign loans for the fight for independence. It was not unusual that Hipolito da Costa, who was born in 1775 in Brazil, and at the age of 19 traveled to Portugal to attend the University of Coimbra, eventually came to the United States. He was appointed to represent the government of Queen Maria of Portugal and met with John Adams and then Thomas Jefferson to ask for finances for the start of independence from Portugal. In addition, stories about myths and monsters, the romantic lengend of Zumbi, a leader who fought for the escaped-slave republic of Palmares, and other colonial Brazilian adventures make an interesting comparison to what was happening in the Unites States in the identical time period. Early urban development, the rise of industries, and city planning are also described. The thousands of invaders who trekked into the Brazilian interior to look for gold are similar to participants in the gold rush in the U.S. In Brazil, however, the searchers for gold are more diversified. Huff describes individuals who are white, brown, black, Indians, males, females, youths, old-timers, poor, rich, nobles and peons, the profane, clergy, friars from all the orders, and Portuguese foreigners. Hundreds of dramatic incidents fill this narrative, all thoroughly documented. One of the most dramatic occurs in the final chapers when the Portuguese royalty leave Lisbon for Brazil in 1808 when Napoleon sent his troops in conquest of Portugal. The elderly Queen Marie I came with her son, Joao VI, now forty years; his wife Carlota-Joaquina, a sister of Ferdinad VII of Spain, sailed on a separate vessel. The crossing of the Atlantic with the household, retainers and staff, necessitaed 26 vessels and another forty merchant ships. The intriguing account of Carlota's relationship to her husband to other suitors is equal to a modern steamy love story. Joao is also a boastful charater who then declares a new empire created in Brazil. Four years later, (Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo) the monarchy was restored in Portugal, but the seeds were sown in Brazil for independence. (See Volume II, "The People, 19th and 20th Centuries") This book should interest those who like adventure and romance, who like to read about the American Revolution and the the Civil War and the lives of U.S. presidents. Hufferd's writing style can be compared favorably to Anthony Beevor's "The Spanish Civil War," Robin Neillands' "Wellington and Napoleon, Clash of Arms, 1807-1815." and books by David McCullough on John Adams and early U.S. colonial leaders. The descriptions of the land and sea battles of invaders, (French and Dutch) the treks to the gold and diamond mines and the exploration of the Amazon from the viewpoint of the invaders and the invaded give a tension to the narration that keeps the reader wanting to turn to the next page. About two-thirds of the material in this book has never been available in English before. Dr. Hufferd gathered materials in libraries and in bookstores in Brazil. The statistics of African slaves in Brazil were extracted from sources that come mainly from the Portuguese. Over three times as many African slaves were sold into brutal servitude in Brazil as were ever brought to or born in the English colonies including the U.S. "Whenever possible, I have relied on a variety of period testimony in the form of relations, reminiscences, chronicles, documents, news article (existing only for the last two centuries), and private letters. I offer accordingly, sometimes with commentary, the judgments of later historians and assorted other investigators," Dr. Hufferd states in his introduction. For academicians, this book is a wealth of information to be used in a History Brazil, Latin American History, American Studies, or a Latin American literature
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Cruzeiro do Sul, A History of Brazil's Half-Millennium: Vol 1 New World Epic
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