num_pages: 232
description: Sergio Buarque de Holanda's Roots of Brazil is one of the iconic books on Brazilian history society and culture. Originally published in 1936 it appears here for the first time in an English language translation with a foreword Why Read Roots of Brazil Today? by Pedro Meira Monteiro one of the world's leading experts on Buarque de Holanda. Roots of Brazil focuses on the multiple cultural influences that forged twentieth-century Brazil especially those of the Portuguese the Spanish other European colonists Native Americans and Africans. Buarque de Holanda argues that all of these originary influences were transformed into a unique Brazilian culture and society-a transition zone. The book presents an understanding of why and how European culture flourished in a large tropical environment that was totally foreign to its traditions and the manner and consequences of this development. Buarque de Holanda uses Max Weber's typological criteria to establish pairs of ideal types as a means of stressing particular characteristics of Brazilians while also trying to understand and explain the local historical process. Along with other early twentieth-century works such as The Masters and the Slaves by Gilberto Freyre and The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil by Caio Prado Junior Roots of Brazil set the parameters of Brazilian historiography for a generation and continues to offer keys to understanding the complex history of Brazil. Roots of Brazil has been published in Italian Spanish Japanese Chinese German and French. This long-awaited English translation will interest students and scholars of Portuguese Brazilian and Latin American history culture literature and postcolonial studies.
language: None
title: Roots of Brazil
publisher: University of Notre Dame Press