As an integrating theme in the biological or ecological expansion of Europe, merino sheep were so important that one authority on their dispersal sees the nineteenth century standing as “the century of the Merino.” Merinos produce a wool of distinctive quality, one long appreciated for providing warmth without excessive weight. Guarded for centuries by Spanish monopoly, the breed's status as something of a prize outside Spain began to change in 1808 with the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian peninsula. By around 1820, a major new phase in merino dispersal was underway with its adaptation to some of the vast grassland ecosystems in the Europeanizing peripheries. The breed was of critical importance to the settlement and development of Australia. It was also highly important in other parts of the southern hemisphere, including in the transformation of existing cattle cultures on the great grassland regions of the Río de la Plata. Here the merino formed the leading edge of rural modernization, offering real potential for ground-up development.

Let us set aside the permanent and silent struggle against the Indians” writes Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos in his recent study of political change in early nineteenth-century Brazil that does, indeed, forgo any attempt to locate Indians within Brazilian history. Mattos apparently fails to see any relevance even in asking questions about how “permanent” armed conflict with Indians might have influenced the character and structure of the emerging national state that he studies. All in all, Mattos's remarks typify an historiography that at best romanticizes Indians, but even more often either simply ignores them or relegates them to the margins of Brazil's past. Indians of course appear in works focusing on the very first stages of colonial settlement. They were on hand to greet Pedro Álvares Cabral and other explorers and to provide labor for early colonists. But, then, from most accounts, it would seem that, within the span of a few generations, disease, warfare, and enslavement had completely destroyed the native populations near and along the Brazilian coast. In this way, ongoing processes of contact, accommodation, and conquest have become, in Mattos's words, a “silent struggle,” and Indians have been transformed into a topic of interest only for scholars concerned with the distant Amazon basin or with the early decades of Portuguese settlement in Brazil.

La naturaleza de la sociedad colonial fué en nuestra historiografía, desde fines del siglo XVIII, motivo de denodados conflictos. Concolorcorvo (1773), uno de los primeros viajeros en relatar sus impresiones del Río de la Plata, manifestó no saber que en esa región existiese mayorazgo alguno. Casi cuarenta años más tarde, Azara fue el primer intelectual, conocedor del Río de la Plata, que repitiendo la afirmación de Concolorcorvo, dió fundamento a la posteriormente denominada excepcionalidad argentina. Sostenía Azara, quien sin duda debía hallarse muy influído por la lectura de Jovellanos, que entre los españoles (incluye los criollos blancos) radicados en esta región de la América Española reinaba “…la más perfecta igualdad, sin distinción de nobles ni de plebeyos. No se conocen entre ellos ni feudos, ni sustituciones ni mayorazgos.” También E. M. Brackenridge, un diplomático Norteamericano que escribió unas memorias de viaje por América del Sur, repite a Azara al afirmar que no había en Buenos Aires “…familias de viejo arraigo” y que “la igualdad general dominante parecía atraer a los hombres a una unión más estrecha.”

Because of the power of film, movies with historical themes affect public perceptions of the past more deeply than do scholarly reconstructions. Film makers and historians search for meaning in separate ways, but their quests can converge. Examples of different approaches to similar destinations are found in a newer film and older historical views of Catholic missions in South America. Released in 1986, The Mission, directed by Roland Joffé with a screenplay by Robert Bolt, displays paternalistic attitudes like those of an earlier generation of North American academic historians. The film's voice is a white European distortion of Native American reality. This essay will examine that voice, offer alternative explanations of historical events, and suggest a research agenda for future study of the Guarani missions of Paraguay, often mentioned in surveys but seldom studied by North American historians.