going to define it through culture.  This culture is forged out of this collision of people and in his case, he was really most interested in that collision of Africans and Europeans.  So in a sense what he's creating is a new ethnicity.  You'll often see this in Brazil, you'll ask Brazilians, so what's your racial background? They'll say, well I'm Brazilian.  They mean that as an ethnic category, so in this sense what you're creating is an ethnicity rather than harkening back to some ancient one.  This makes it very different from old world nationalism. ERIC VAN BEMMEL So how do you contrast this ethnicity with a national affiliation or a national identity? MARSHALL EAKIN Yeah, well this is - the sort of strange side of this is that in the United States, for example, what we construct is a civic nationalism.  It's built around a national mythology, this essentially focusses on freedom and equality, that no matter who else you are, you're no better than I am.  We all know that not everyone is equally free and equal, but that's a sort of civic identity.  Whereas in Brazil, until very recently, there is no civic identity.  What is the core of their national identity is a cultural.  This ethnicity is at the core of that cultural identity. ERIC VAN BEMMEL To what extent did the state direct the process of pushing this ethnicity? MARSHALL EAKIN A nice way of viewing this is that what you have here is