Nineteenth-Century Travelers’ Accounts of Brazil
Published travel accounts describing foreign visitors’ impressions present a valuable source of information about nineteenth-century Brazil. These sources are useful in that they record customs of daily life within a slave society so taken for granted by Brazilians that they escaped comment in the works of native writers. As James Wetherell, former British Vice-Consul and author of a book about life in Bahia, noted, “The Brazilians do not give themselves much trouble regarding things which, to the, are everyday occurrences, or constantly before them; what they are accustomed to, however, strangers would regard with curious eyes… (Stray Notes from Bahia, 103).” However, these sources must be used with care as they are limited in their view in several crucial respects. First, their accounts are as revealing about the author’s own society and background as they are about Brazil. For example, protestant travelers were nearly unanimous in their criticism of Catholic belief and practice, characterizing it as external ritual without full understanding on the part of participants. British writers in particular often made trips to Brazil with the intention of gathering evidence to argue for the abolition of slavery. Quaker abolitionist John Candler’s Narrative of a Recent Visit to Brazil (London, 1853) is a good example of this type of work. Length of stay, sites visited, and language ability are also important factors; while some authors lived in Brazil for extensive periods, getting to know a city very well, some of the naturalists traveled more rapidly from one point of interest to another. Not all of the authors spoke Portuguese, circumscribing their interactions with most Brazilians.
Another caution comes in the groups of people most travelers thought worthy of description. Most foreign observers focused their attention on the extremes of Brazilian society: the economic and social elite, with whom they socialized, and the slaves, in whom they knew their audiences took a lively interest. The experiences of the free poor majority received less attention. One example of this is the frequent emphasis on the complete seclusion of Brazilian women within the family home. Though this may have been the norm among elite families during the first half of the century and lingered longer in rural regions like the plantation Recôncavo longer than in urban areas, most women, free poor and slave alike, could not afford the luxury of remaining within the home. That women working as washerwomen, field workers, and street vendors were not included in the category of secluded “women” discussed simply went without saying.
Google Books is an excellent platform for reading these Brazilian travel accounts. I have created a digital bookshelf on Google that includes many travel narratives, and continuously update it as more texts become available. In addition to making rare books more accessible, the Google Books platform allows search of both individual books and my entire Brazilian travel narrative collection. I’ve written short annotations for many of the books, and you are welcome to add your own analysis by logging on and contributing a review. You can also download copies of the books as pdf files or to an electronic reader.
Below is an example of the Google Books interface for James Wetherell’s Stray Notes from Bahia (London: Webb and Hunt, 1860).