The statesman known as the Viscount of São Leopoldo (1774-1847) originally published this carefully documented contemporary history in 1819 and amplified it for a new edition in 1836. It is of interest for the historian of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, the Sete Missões district of Uruguay and of the Luso-Spanish war of 1766-1777. The present edition also includes a long and very interesting introduction by Viana Moog detailing the efforts of Fernandes Pinheiro in support of the German colonization program in Rio Grande do Sul as well as his work as an historian. Apparently the subtitle of the work—A History of German Colonization in Rio Grande do Sul—refers to this introduction since the body of the work is surprisingly silent on the subject of German colonization.
The first two chapters of the Anais are a topographical and geological discussion of Rio Grande and a history of its early eighteenth-century settlement. The third chapter concerns the 1750 border agreement and the remaining fourteen chapters are predominantly devoted to details of the Luso-Spanish war. Occasional paragraphs in the war narrative make mention of crops grown and exported in the period and the size and growth of cattle ranches, but these topics are not much dwelt upon. Much more satisfactory for social historians are the short descriptions of Santa Catarina and Sete Missões. Fernandes Pinheiro presents eighteenth-century population figures by community and race as well as details on social and economic characteristics and the history of settlement in each place. The book also includes thirty-one pages of documents concerning the war and the early settlement of Rio Grande do Sul, in addition to a long manifesto written by Bento Gonçalves da Silva, the leader of the Rio Grandense revolutionary movement of 1835.
