Joaquim Nabuco: Política

The hasty preparation of this volume will disappoint the historian and mislead the student. The series to which the book belongs intends to introduce the general reader to the great social scientists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mostly Europeans, but also some Latin Americans. In view of the audience, Joaquim Nabuco deserves to be included because of his writings on the Second Empire and Abolition. Still, Nabuco was an activist and writer rather than theoretician, and to present him otherwise distorts his place in history. The editor of this volume attempted to organize selected texts in such a way as to build a coherent view of society and politics without demonstrating that Nabuco himself tried to do so. The introduction merely sketches his biography, reprints a section from the editor’s well-known political history, and lists some of Nabuco’s major publications. The selected writings are presented in order of publication but treat subjects in disparate periods. The selection subtitles, cast in social-science jargon, often imply more coherence than the material warrants. The serious reader should stick to traditional sources that do more justice to the subject and his era.