The travel literature, which did not have Brazil as final destination, could have disproportionate and unsuspected repercussions. By Dr. Ângela Maria Vieira DominguesProfessor of HistoryInstituto de Investigação Cientíca TropicalCentro de História de Além-Mar (FCSH/UNL) Abstract As part of a reflection on Atlantic history, I intend to reread the travel literature written by Europeans who stayed[…]
The Portuguese colonization of Brazil was initially quite different from the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Introduction Although news of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of the Americas had already spread across Europe, the Portuguese stumbled upon Brazil by accident. In 1498, Vasco da Gama successfully sailed from Portugal around the southern tip of Africa to India,[…]
Marx was a seminal figure in twentieth-century landscape design and plant conservation. By Tom Christopher Born in Sao Paulo in 1909, Burle Marx was the child of an immigrant German father and a Brazilian mother of French descent. Raised from the age of four in Rio de Janeiro, Burle Marx absorbed that city’s largely Eurocentric[…]
The Portuguese colonization of Brazil was like that of Spanish Latin America. The Portuguese Colonization of Brazil Now the largest country in South America and the fifth largest in the world, Brazil is not only impressive in size, but it is also geographically diverse with the Amazonian jungle at its center and the Atlantic Ocean[…]
An assignment for Life magazine about poverty in Brazil introduces photographer Gordon Parks to Flávio da Silva and one of the most complicated, compelling, and revisited stories of his career. It’s easy to see the beginnings of things, as Joan Didion aptly tells us in the opening sentence of her essay “Goodbye to All That,”[…]
For nearly a century, Quilombo of Palmares was an Afro-Brazilian state, populated and run by people who had freed themselves from slavery. By Matthew Wills Brazil is the fifth most populous country in the world, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the country has a complex racial history. For instance, how many Americans know that[…]
For decades, they’ve sustainably managed their community forest, relying on it for food, shelter and livelihoods. By Caleb Stevens, Sarah Parsons, Katie Reytar and Bill DuganPhotos by: André D’elia Introduction The Yudja are one of many indigenous groups who call Brazil’s Amazon rainforest home. For decades, they’ve sustainably managed their community forest, relying on it[…]
“The loneliest person who ever lived,” she once called herself. As Brazil attempts to train all eyes on the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics, observers continue to be distracted by the country’s travails: the recent Zika outbreak, economic difficulties, and the controversial impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Not a few people are wondering how[…]
Rugendas up the challenging mission of drawing and conveying the New World to Europe. A significant weakness of commonplace records of the first four centuries of Brazil’s history is that they do not capture the wide range of interactions between humans and nonhuman animals, nor recognize them as an essential element in the formation of[…]
Brazil’s history can be divided into five economic periods, each characterized by a dominant export product. By Rex A. Hudson The Indigenous Population In 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral’s fleet, which was en route to India, landed at Porto Seguro in what is now the state of Bahia. The territory that comprises modern Brazil had a[…]