The Prados, like many Paulista elite families, were powerful from planting, commerce, and finance by the 1850s; political alliances and judicious marriages enhanced their local status during the era when their region emerged as Brazil’s most dynamic. Members became central in national political and intellectual life from the Second Reign through the Old Republic; the fin-de-siècle family matriarch, Veridiana, also provides one of the celebrated exceptions to the rule for elite women.
Granted enviable access to this crucial family and their papers, Levi explores the Prados’ origins, structure, life, response to European culture, role in the coffee economy, political and intellectual activities, and decline as a preeminent regional force. He means to suggest, from this focused study, more common familial and cultural trends during Brazil’s “modernization” (pp. 15-16), and he does so with general success. Although his research base is circumscribed, Levi does generalize well from it in his critique of traditional assumptions (introduction and chaps. 2, 6), especially Gilberto Frcyre’s in Sobrados e mucambos. Levi’s analysis is less satisfying in discussing European cultural impact (p. 16, chap. 3, and passim), where he accepts Frevre’s assumptions (pp. 52-55 and passim) and elite cultural self-perceptions too easily, rather than successfully attempting to get beneath them. Still, Levi’s is a useful introduction to the Prados’ ambivalent and nuanced engagement with Europe.
Although the chapter on family politics is occasionally confused and fuzzy (pp. 89, 91, 97-100, and 102), Levi's exposition is usually lucid and careful. He also generally writes sympathetically of the Prados without straying into apologia (which is what makes so striking the odd treatment of the Prados’ role as planters, where Levi pictures them as uncomfortable and unwilling slaveowners [pp. 73-75]; benevolent employers [pp. 79, 82]; and hapless victims of British ideology, Brazilian history, and a dependent economy [p. 87]).
This is, in sum, a rich and useful (if occasionally flawed) monograph. It was pioneering as a 1974 Yale dissertation, and remains a staple for students of the Brazilian family, elites, and women. In this updated and revised version, we finally have its publication in English, a decade after its Portuguese translation; it is welcome and long overdue.
