The different Brazils in Abbé Raynal's histoire des deux indes

Abstract

This article compares and analyzes the sections on Brazil in the 1770, 1774 and 1780 editions of Histoire philosophique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, by Guillaume Thomas François Raynal. The aim is to contrast the ideas disseminated by the current historiography about this eighteenthcentury work, which was the most widely read of its time, with the judgments about Portuguese America that emerge in those editions. In effect, some issues stand out: first, the inhabitants and settlers of this new world, that is, Amerindians, then Blacks and Creole Portuguese - Brazilian-born settlers of Portuguese descent - and finally, its administration, highlighting the Pombaline period and the Indian Directorate. Contradicting the prevalent opinions that see this work as a "war machine" fired at oppression and colonialism, Raynal's discourse, which is less consistent but contains a greater wealth of information and new value judgments, particularly in the last edition (1780), proves to be surprisingly benevolent towards colonial Brazil. Unlike repeated commonplace observations, the topics of the miscegenation of the settlers, the liberation of the Amerindians and the manumission of slaves - an explanation for the absence of revolts - foreshadow the themes of Freyrian Lusotropicalism.