Studies of the social and economic history of the Amazon are few and far between, and long-term studies that attempt to link the history of the colonial and post-colonial periods are especially unusual. The demands of academic careers make it difficult for many scholars to undertake the time-consuming research required to produce a book covering such long time spans in a serious way, especially since the “long” nineteenth century saw three different political regimes in Brazil: colonial, imperial, and republican. Moreover, the isolation of the Amazon, the conditions of its archives and documentary collections, and its lack of a well-developed historiography further complicate efforts to study this vast region. Thus, Robin L. Anderson has undertaken an especially difficult task writing a book on the settlement of the Amazon from 1758 to 1911.