When the animosity of the Spanish toward the Portuguese is added to the cultural prejudice which already separates Anglo-Americans from Latin Americans, the resulting barriers are hard to surmount and even to understand. It is partly for this reason that we know little about the bandeirantes—trail blazers, slave hunters, prospectors, explorers, and raiders of Spanish missions, who are defined more by their internal qualities than by their external purposes. Nevertheless, they played a large part in occupying a vast area of continental proportions and in forming the Brazilian mystique. Richard M. Morse has done much to fill this lacuna in our knowledge with the collection of readings here under review. All the selections except one are original translations from Portuguese or Spanish, and the exception by Percy Alvin Martin is precisely the book’s weakest component. Some of the other readings are contemporary documents, but most of them consist of perceptive interpretations and incisive analyses by Latin American historians. Morse’s own introduction is richly suggestive.
The experience of the bandeirantes raises important issues regarding human experience in general which go beyond such stand-bys as economic and geographic determinants. The edenic vision of these Brazilian pathfinders—part Indian, part European and part Christian, part demonic—presents a fascinating subject for analysis. The validity of theories regarding the effect of the frontier upon institutional structure and the understanding of society’s reactions to stress are two other dimensions of the Brazilian case. The bandeirantes’ centrifugal process of settlement helped to weaken the populational base and may have had adverse effects upon all Brazilian development. But the politico-cultural unity of this vast territory may be at least partially explained by this chapter in Brazil’s history.
The subject matter here is not limited to the bandeirantes. Other selections deal with the controverted attempt of paulistas to crown their own king; the conquest of Palmares, a refuge for runaway Negro slaves; and the mining prosperity of eighteenth-century Brazil. The editor has not tried to present narrowly pro-and-con versions of the bandeirante, and this is good; but one does sense inadequate attention to the critical, Spanish, Jesuit point of view. Also the fact that the ideas of Vianna Moog have already been presented in English does not excuse their omission here.
This book, also available in paperback, can be put to a variety of teaching uses. Not only will it be de rigueur for courses on Brazilian history, along with Gilberto Freyre’s The Masters and the Slaves, but it will be useful in broader surveys because of its relevance to the story of the conquistadores, the Jesuit missions, the qualities of a mining economy, the question of race mixture, and the international rivalries which cast a shadow so far into the national period. Teachers will be especially grateful to Morse for this addition to Brazilian materials in English.
