João Capistrano de Abreu (1853-1927) was probably the best of the self-taught Brazilian historians who for so long a time dominated their country’s historiography. His pre-eminent position was partly a result of the fact that he looked to Leopold von Ranke as a model, and was, therefore, less of an amateur than many of his contemporaries. More important, he used a clear, undecorative, and compelling style of writing. Although some of his research was lavished on insignificant details, as a whole, his publications are well worth reading. The one now under review is the second edition of a collection of several essays dealing with the exploration and settlement of the Brazilian interior, published in various newspapers and reviews between 1884 and 1923, and gathered together for the first time in 1930 by the Sociedade Capistrano de Abreu. It was not reviewed in the HAHR at that time and, therefore, merits our attention today.
The title essay is the longest one (pp. 61-165), and is certainly the most important. It was first published in 1899, and, according to José Honório Rodrigues, writing in his introduction to Capistrano’s correspondence (2 vols., Instituto Nacional do Livro, Rio, 1954), it played a role in Brazilian historiography similar to that of Frederick Jackson Turner’s in the United States. In this way he may be said to have anticipated the work of Euclides da Cunha in turning Brazilian attention to the sertão. Capistrano’s major task here was to trace the most important currents of exploration and settlement and identify the principal points from which they started. In so doing, considerable reference is made to the economic factors that influenced these currents. Other essays in the collection deal generally with this same theme, although some essays on the discovery of the coastline and the history of Ceará—Capistrano’s home state—are also included.
It is greatly to be regretted that the Sociedade Capistrano de Abreu has not worked constantly, as would their namesake, toward greater perfection. They state that it is their purpose to issue what is essentially a reprint, and not to change or alter it in any way. Since copies of this work are indeed hard to find these days, any new edition is a good thing. But it seems unfortunate that they missed such an opportunity for improving on the original. I do not refer to glosses of the text by the addition of innumerable footnotes in the manner set in style by Capistrano himself in his edition of Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen’s História geral. But surely, in a publication that deals principally with geographical aspects of historical activity, a map, or rather, many maps, would have been an obvious help to the reader and a real contribution to historical knowledge. This is especially true in the absence of any first-rate historical atlas for Brazil.
A much easier task would have been the organization of an index. With the multitude of persons and places with which Capistrano dealt, an index would have been invaluable. There again, the Sociedade could have followed the instructions given by Capistrano to his friend Guilherme barão de Studart: “junta a tudo isto dois índices, os mais simples e os mais faceis de fazer, ao mesmo tempo de conveniencia intuitiva: um índice onomástico, um índice geográfico.” (Correspondência, I, 166).
