The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization

Posted in Anthropology, Books, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Monographs, Slavery, Social Science on 2022-02-01 22:51Z by Steven

The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization

University of California Press
January 2022 (Originally published 1986)
676 pages
Trim Size: 6.14 x 9.21
Hardcover ISBN: 9780520367005
Paperback ISBN: 9780520337060

Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987)

Introduction by: David H. P. Maybury-Lewis (1929-2007)

This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Table of Contents

  • Frontmatter
  • Preface to the first English-Language Edition
  • Preface to the Second English-language Edition
  • Translator’s Acknowledgments
  • Author’s Preface to the Paperback Edition
  • Introduction to the Paperback Edition
  • I General Characteristics of the Portuguese Colonization of Brazil: Formation of an Agrarian, Slave-Holding and Hybrid Society
  • II The Native in the Formation of the Brazilian Family
  • III The Portuguese Colonizer: Antecedents and Predispositions
  • IV The Negro Slave in the Sexual and Family Life of the Brazilian
  • V The Negro Slave in the Sexual and Family Life of the Brazilian (continued)
  • Plans showing Big House of the Noruega Plantation
  • Glossary of the Brazilian Terms Used
  • Bibliography
  • Index of Names
  • Index of Subjects
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“Every Brazilian, even the light-skinned fair-haired one carries about him on his soul, when not on soul and body alike, the shadow or at least the birthmark of the aborigine or the negro…”

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2020-06-30 16:13Z by Steven

After slavery, Brazil didn’t institute prohibitions of interracial relationships or draconian racial distinctions, as the United States did. The absence of a rigid racial taxonomy led to an extraordinarily mixed country, with single families composed of multiple skin tones, and far more racial fluidity.

“Every Brazilian, even the light-skinned fair-haired one carries about him on his soul, when not on soul and body alike, the shadow or at least the birthmark of the aborigine or the negro,” wrote the 20th-century Brazilian sociologist Gilberto de Mello Freyre, who examined the country’s racial mixing in the 1930s. A “paradise,” he declared Brazil, “in respect to race relations.”

Terrence McCoy, “In Brazil, the death of a poor black child in the care of rich white woman brings a racial reckoning,” June 28, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-racism-black-lives-matter-miguel-otavio-santana/2020/06/26/236a2944-b58b-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html.

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