Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
An adequate comprehension of Brazilian institutions, history, economics, and other aspects of national life could be but with great difficulty acquired without a consideration of the role played by the Negro in the development of the Brazilian nation. His influence has been far-reaching, encompassing the major social institutions; and his impress is to be found in virtually every phase of the culture. Although originating from a wide diversity of African nations with distinctive cultural backgrounds, he has received as well as given culturally, and is distinctively Brazilian.
In this paper the Negro in Brazil will be discussed from three different points of view: the demographic; the historical; and the social.
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10 Expilly, Charles, Mulheres e Costumes do Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia Editôra Nacional, 1935), p. 20. (First pub. 1863).Google Scholar
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15 Ibid., p. 497.
16 Ibid., p. 299.
17 Calmon, op. cit., pp. 79–80.
18 Rugendas, op. cit., p. 191.
19 Expilly, op. cit., p. 109 ff. The Portuguese wording of the billboard was as follows: REPRESENTAÇÃO EXTRÁORDINARIA EM BENEFÍCIO DE UMA RAPARIGA JOVEM, BELA E INFELIZ. O PRODUTO DA FESTA SERA DESTINADO A PAGAR A SUA LIBERDADE. FIDALGOS, MOÇAS, SENHORAS, RESPONDEI AO NOSSO APELO COMO SÃO VICENTE DE PAULO: “VINDE PARTIR AS CADEIAS DA ESCRAVA.” As a sequel, Fruchot, the Frenchman in question, and Expilly went north with the slave girl, Manuela, for the purpose of buying her father’s freedom.
20 On Moslem slaves see Freyre, Gilberto, Interpretação do Brasil (Rio: Livrari a José Olympio Editôra, 1947), pp. 184–187.Google Scholar See also Fletcher, James C. and Kidder, D. P., Brazil and the Brazilians (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1866), p. 136.Google Scholar On Negroes in the colonial militia see Koster, op. cit., pp. 261, 484–486.
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24 The Brazilian scene offers a sharp contrast to the American in this connection. Frazier, E. Franklin in The Negro Family in the United States (rev. and abr. ed.; New York: Dryden Press, 1951),Google ScholarPubMed reports: “The accession to the free Negro class through unions of free white women and Negro men and free colored women and white men was kept at a minimum by the drastic laws against such unions” (p. 146). Speaking of the free mulatto caste in New Orleans after the Reconstruction he states: “But when white domination was once more established, the color line was drawn so as to include the former free people of color and their descendants and the former slaves in the same category, and both were subjected on the whole to the same restrictions” (p. 202). See also pp. 168–169, 175, 177 and 182.
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