Charles Boxer and the Brazil: history and historiography

• Grant number: 11/01012-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: May 01, 2011
• End date: July 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Laura de Mello e Souza
• Grantee: Alberto Luiz Schneider
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research proposal is divided into two acts. The production of the text, with the author as its fundamental actor, and the reception of the text, with the reader its character. In the first act it is interesting to scrutinize the historiographical production of Charles Boxer devoted to Brasil, from an imperial perspective, between the years of 1952 and 1965. It is, in other words, about trying to understand how Charles Boxer read Portuguese America and its mirror image, the African Coast, between 1602 and 1750, when the South Atlantic becomes a protagonist in the interior of the Portuguese Empire.It is thus that the central object of investigation is to be found in the trilogy Salvador de Sá and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola 1602 - 1686 (1952), The Dutch in Brazil 1624-1654 (1957), The Golden Age of Brazil 1695-1750: The Growing Pains of Colonial Society (1962), to which should be added the small and noteworthy essays: Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire 1415-1825, and Portuguese Society in the Tropics, The Municipal Councils of Goa, Macao, Bahia and Luanda 1510-1800 (1965). It is the intention of the second act of this research to inquire into the reception of Boxer's work in Brasil, investigating the manner in which Charles Boxer was read by a certain group of Brazilian historians that in one way or another dominated - and continue to do so - from the seventies of the last century, specializing in different subjects of colonial history. How did Fernando Novais, Laura de Mello e Souza, Evaldo Cabral de Mello, Ronaldo Vainfas, João Fragoso, Maria Fernanda Bicalho, Leila Mezan Algranti, Arno Wehling and Luiz Felipe de Alencastro understand the work of Charles Boxer? Up to what point do they admit or refuse influences? How did they see the years of formation of Charles Boxer and how do they see him today? What is the proximity and what is the distance between the production of Boxer and French historiography? What are the relations between Boxer and the important Marxist inheritance? How does Boxer engage or not engage in a "dialogue" with Brazilian historians, his contemporaries?