The Masters And The Slaves by Gilberto Freyre

In its kitchens and bedrooms, a cultural and sexual fusion of peoples was accomplished. During three centuries of near isolation from Portuguese government, Brazil's 'patriarchal' society centered around the self-sufficient plantation big house. According to Casa-grande & senzala, Brazil was founded in a burst of energy by the 'miscible' Portuguese, who were culturally suited to the task of building a multiracial tropical colony. Freyre lectured, visited universities, and received honors throughout the world, including an honorary British knighthood in 1971.įreyre's history of Brazil took a nostalgic and regional perspective, centering on the rise and decline of the sugar plantations of the Northeast. Casa-grande & senzala was translated into at least six languages.

Freyre's impact was not limited to the United States. Their debates developed into the contemporary fields of comparative race relations and comparative history of slavery. In the 1940s scholars influenced by Freyre, such as Frank Tannenbaum, challenged Americans to measure themselves against the model of race relations presented in Casa-grande & senzala. Outside of Brazil, Freyre's ideas had their greatest repercussion in the United States, where his studies at Baylor (1918–1920) and Columbia (1920–1922) universities, bohemian life in New York, and travels in the South had refined his sense of Brazil's uniqueness. These included the centrality of the patriarchal family as a social institution, Brazil's historical formation as a slave society, the sugar plantation as an institution, and the importance of folkways, especially those related to the house, food, and healing.

Many of the ideas of Casa-grande & senzala and its two sequels, Sobrados e mucambos (The Mansions and the Shanties, 1936) and Ordem e progresso (Order and Progress, 1959), established themes for the next generation of social scientists in Brazil. For example, the claim that Brazil was a model of racial harmony became a theme of Brazilian diplomatic initiatives. It eventually inspired Carnival samba pageants (1962) as well as nationalist political propaganda. This energetic and erotic essay became a best-seller. Modern Brazilians were not doomed racial mongrels but rather the fortunate heirs of the colonial plantation's fusion of Portuguese, Indian, and African culture. Freyre argued that Brazil's 'mixture' was psychic and cultural in addition to racial. His historical essay Casa-grande & senzala (The Masters and the Slaves, 1933) popularized Franz Boas's anthropological concept of culture as an antidote to pessimistic race science. 18 July 1987), pivotal Brazilian cultural historian and essayist of the 1930s.

The Masters And The Slaves by Gilberto Freyre