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The Agassizes Take Brazil: The Foreigners' Approach

Caroline Landau


At the dusk of the American Civil War in 1865, Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz embarked on a journey to Brazil from a New York City port. Brazil was certainly present in American consciousness at that time, but for perhaps unexpected reasons. Ever since the Confederacy of the splintered United States had switched largely to food crops to feed their troops and witnessed the decimation of their scant cash crops in General Sherman’s March to the Sea, Brazil had replaced the Confederacy as a primary exporter of cotton to Europe. The Agassizes, however, were not motivated to travel to Brazil because of this new cotton boom; rather, they sought to follow Charles Darwin’s footsteps. They, like Darwin, were naturalist scientists exploring biological life in Latin America.

With the encouragement of Brazil’s Emperor D. Pedro II to pursue scientific investigation, Professor Agassiz assembled a troupe of aides and friends to accompany him on his fourteen-month journey — to Rio de Janeiro, Pará, Manaus, Tabatinga, Tefé, Mauhes, and Ceará along both the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers — to collect specimens of plants and animals and compare them to those of North America. The purpose of A Journey in Brazil is ostensibly to determine how Brazil came “to be inhabited by the animals and plants now living there” and what reason there was “to believe that the present condition of things in this country [was] in any sense derived from the past.” Nevertheless, Mrs. Agassiz’s experiences, thoughts, and anecdotes offer both an American perspective on post-independence Brazil and an elite visitor’s analysis of social structure and conflict in a foreign land. Her narrative, mainly unrelated to science, instead demonstrates her affection for the country, opposition to slavery, but also typically ethnocentric attitude toward this “exotic” land.

In the same way that some visitors to unfamiliar lands today are charmed by the simplicity or inferiority of foreign goods, Mrs. Agassiz views most things in Brazil with an almost-condescending nod to the “picturesque charm” of the country, especially its tropical fruit, dance, and song (445). In her sojourns throughout the country, Mrs. Agassiz remarks not only on the raw beauty and “wild, fantastic forms” of her surroundings, but also repeatedly notes how amiable, if a bit formal, the culture is (69). She comments at length on the hospitality of her Brazilian hosts: “you have only to present yourself at their gates at the end of a day’s journey, and if you have the air of a respectable traveller, you are sure of a hearty welcome, shelter, and food [sic]” (56).

Mrs. Agassiz’s status as “the respectable traveller” in her journal, however, ought to be viewed with some suspicion, for readers must not lose sight of the fact that her views are informed by both intelligent, astute observation and privileged, ethnocentric tendencies. Hailing from the wealth of the American Northeast, she has a penchant to find all Brazilian things “primitive” and to apply American norms to a place in which the culture, language, and climate are completely “other” (55). In this vein, Mrs. Agassiz criticizes the languorous pace of life in Brazil, calling fazenda life “medieval” (106). She comments that, unlike in the United States, few Brazilians adhere to time schedules. Most seem to hold on to an amanhã attitude, that “to-morrow is better than to-day” (93).

The most striking example of Mrs. Agassiz’s moral and cultural biases, however, relates to her position on slavery, inarguably the most controversial issue of the day. Although Brazil had officially abolished the slave trade in 1850, slavery itself continued to be legal until D. Pedro II’s daughter Princess Isabel signed the Golden Law of emancipation in 1888. In fact, with the advent of labor-intensive coffee production in Brazilian fazendas, which Mrs. Agassiz describes at great length, slavery became even more profitable and productive. The internal slave trade boomed, and only late in the nineteenth century did fazendeiros begin to push for European immigration as an alternative to slavery. The Agassizes, however, had witnessed slave emancipation in the United States just two years earlier in 1863, and were consequently sensitive to this topic, which had contributed to shattering the unity between North and South in the American Civil War. With this background, the Agassizes naturally view Brazilian slavery as an affront to a culture that is in other ways incredibly rich.

Although segregation and racism would continue even after emancipation in the United States, the Brazilian tendency to differentiate among the races clearly distresses Mrs. Agassiz. In a country in which race covers a wide spectrum—from white to mameluco to mulato to black, and everything in between—Mrs. Agassiz quickly comes to identify the traditional demarcations even among types of slaves in nineteenth-century Brazil. She notes the differences between the acculturated ladino slave, the “fine-looking athletic [negro] of a nobler type” in Minas Gerais, and the unintelligent newest arrival, the boçal (82). Curiously, Mrs. Agassiz’s description of slave labor lacks the abolitionist’s fiery denunciation of brutal servitude and tends instead toward a maternal concern for the country’s well-being. In much the same way that apologist Southerners in the United States thought that their slaves needed and benefited from slavery, Mrs. Agassiz question of “‘what will they do with this great gift of freedom?’” exemplifies her position that neither masters nor slaves would cope well without slavery (49).

Mrs. Agassiz’s perspective embodies the long-held notion later popularized by sociologist Gilberto Freyre that Brazilian slavery was of a softer and gentler variety than that of the United States. Because slaves in Brazil were not condemned to the “one-drop [of black blood] rule,” they must therefore have been better integrated into society and treated with more dignity, according to this view. When Mrs. Agassiz analyzes the immigration policies that both the government and fazendeiros advocated to replace dwindling slave labor, however, she praises German participation in the workforce, implying a preference for paid European labor over slave labor. Whether this attitude stems from anti-slavery or Eurocentric tendencies is unclear. Though Mrs. Agassiz clings to the notion that whites are superior to blacks, she nevertheless related quite well and genuinely to the indigenous and African peoples she met along her journey. She frequently cites the freedom and beauty of Brazilian Indians and blacks, even claiming that “free blacks compare well in intelligence and activity with the Brazilians and Portuguese” (129).

The positive commentary that Mrs. Agassiz bestows on Brazil’s diverse races and cultures is absent from her discussion of Brazilian progress, or the lack thereof. Because nineteenth-century Brazil relied upon slavery as the bedrock of a largely agricultural society, and generally ignored the industrial revolutions that rocked the rest of the world, the Agassizes firmly believed that Brazilian slavery was hindering intellectual and economic progress. Considering that the purpose of the Agassizes’ trip was to foment education regarding tropical species, the fact that “only half the nation [was] educated” resonated strongly with Mrs. Agassiz and the other Americans (502). Mrs. Agassiz also strongly disagrees with many aspects of Brazilian politics, including the “petty local” power tensions that preceded established coronelismo, a form of machine politics especially prevalent in the Brazilian Northeast that characteristically granted voters favors in exchange for their continued loyalty to local rulers. Moreover, Mrs. Agassiz witnessed firsthand the imparity bound up in D. Pedro II’s sanctioned methods of drafting soldiers to fight in the unpopular Paraguayan War. When court officials raided indigenous settlements in the backlands, or sertão, in search of men fit to fight in the war, the women and children of the depleted villages often starved. This, exacerbated by the region’s unpredictable rainfall, highlights another famous disparity in Brazil: while the South of the country, especially the Paraíba Valley zone of coffee production, industrialized and accumulated national prestige and benefits, the agricultural North, subject to droughts and illness, lagged behind.

While Mrs. Agassiz’s observations of Brazil are certainly colored by both her upbringing and the purpose of the voyage — explaining in part why she so prefers the tropical Amazonas to any city she sees — her journal is an invaluable tool in analyzing a foreigner’s perspective on Brazilian life in the nineteenth century. Her ignorance about many Brazilian norms, such as the commonness of illegitimate children, allows readers to experience the country afresh with her. Overall, Mrs. Agassiz offers a balanced description of Brazil, criticizing the inefficiencies and disparities that riddle the country, but also praising its rich customs and hospitality. While she does reinforce many stereotypes about Brazil, particularly its underdeveloped, exotic, jungle-like quality, she also firmly believes in its future progress. For every negative, moreover, she presents a positive: behind every illegitimate Indian child lies a beautiful, independent mother; for every backward institution, such as slavery, there is a charitable one, such as the Santa Casa de Misericórdia. Perhaps the Agassizes themselves best sum up their impressions in their notes upon leaving Brazil with, as they recall, “warm sympathy…and sincere personal gratitude towards [Brazil]” (517). Though Brazil would not reach an age of republicanism or abolish the arcane slave culture for several decades, what the Agassizes capture in their A Journey in Brazil is not only a detailed account of tropical flora, but also a testament to rich Brazilian culture and the wheels of progress in motion, both of which have continued to captivate visitors to this day.

Works Cited

Agassiz, Louis and Mrs. A Journey in Brazil. Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1871.

Written in partial fulfillment of requirements for HI0163.01, Modern Latin America I (Professor James Green – Fall 2005).