Robert Southey - Bloomsbury History Theory and Method

Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. Varella, Flávia. "Robert Southey." Bloomsbury BHTM Autumn Articles 2024. London: Bloomsbury, 2022. Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method. Web. 6 Dec. 2024. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350885226.015>. Accessed from: www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com Accessed on: Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília Access provided by: Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors Copyright © Bloomsbury Publishing50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK 2024 Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. Robert Southey by Flávia Varella DOI:10.5040/9781350885226.015 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Identifier: b-9781350885226-015 FULL ARTICLE Introduction Robert Southey was born on August 12, 1774, in Bristol, and passed away on March 21, 1843 in Keswick. His literary endeavors persisted until the end of 1839, despite grappling with a degenerative ailment, possibly Alzheimer’s disease, which exacerbated his condition (Speck 2006: 251). Over the course of his life, Southey’s literary pursuits were extensive and diverse, spanning poetry, historical accounts, biographies, and numerous essays. His academic journey commenced in 1788 at Westminster School; however, he faced expulsion following his dissent expressed in an article published in the March 29, 1792, edition of the school periodical, The Flagellant, opposing corporal punishment of students (Speck 2006: 20). Subsequently, in November 1792, he gained admission to Balliol College, Oxford, though he departed without completing his studies. In 1820, Southey received the honorary degree of LL.D. by the University of Oxford (Speck 2006). Southey’s inaugural ventures to Portugal, facilitated by his maternal uncle Reverend Hebert Hill, occurred from January 27 to May 5, 1796, and again from April 30, 1800, until the conclusion of June 1801 (Speck 2006). These sojourns, alongside the ensuing camaraderie, proved seminal to Southey’s trajectory as a Hispanist scholar. His extensive library, comprising 14,000 volumes, including 700 dedicated to Iberian history (Humphreys 1978: 9; Southey 2011), underscored his commitment on Portuguese and Spanish topics. In 1802, Southey relocated with his wife, Edith, to Greta Hall in Keswick, partly to aid his sisterin-law Sara during her husband Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s frequent absences and to cope with the loss of their daughter Margaret. Greta Hall remained Southey’s abode until his demise (Speck 2006). He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1813 (Speck 2006: 123) and participated as an honorary member of various academies, including the Royal Spanish Academy, Royal Spanish Academy of History, Royal Netherlands Institute, Cymmrodorion Society, Massachusetts Historical Society, American Antiquarian Society, Royal Irish Academy, Bristol Literary and Philosophical Society, Metropolitan Institution, Philomathic Institution, among others (Southey 1829a). Southey’s contributions to British periodicals were prolific, notably in the Quarterly Review, where he penned essays on diverse subjects from its inception in 1809 until 1839. He also contributed to the Monthly Magazine, between 1796 and 1800, Critical Review, between 1798 and 1801, Annual Review, between 1808 and 1809, Edinburgh Annual Register, between 1810 Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. and 1813, The Foreign Quarterly Review, in 1827, and Foreign Review, between 1828 and 1830. Among these, only the essays published in the Monthly Magazine were signed, with the initials T.Y., indicating that they were written by Robert Southey (Cabral 1959: 502). In addition to numerous poems, Southey authored lengthy verse epics, including Thalaba, the Destroyer (1801), Madoc (1805), The Curse of Kehama (1810), and Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814). His forays into the field of history yielded the History of Brazil published in 1810, 1817, and 1819, which cover a long period of its history, from the arrival of the Portuguese in the land to the transfer of the Portuguese court there in 1808. In the following decade, he published the History of the Peninsular War in three volumes released sporadically in 1823, 1827, and 1832. He left a History of Portugal unfinished. Influences The interest and dedication of Robert Southey to Iberian studies began through his uncle Herbert Hill, a chaplain stationed in Lisbon, who hosted Southey during his two excursions to Portugal (Curry 1975: 33). It was at Hill’s persistent urging that Southey embarked on his maiden voyage to Portugal in 1795, affording him closer contact with Iberian culture and access to his extensive literary collection. Anticipating a subsequent journey in 1800, Southey contemplated the composition of a “History of Portugal,” intending to amass pertinent materials during his stay (Southey 1799). This sojourn marked the inception of his project of writing the history of Brazil, as an integral facet of the broader history of the Portuguese Empire (Humphreys 1978: 6). After the second travel, Southey expressed a desire to return to Portugal, but his plans were thwarted by the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars. There is also evidence to suggest that he may have explored opportunities for appointment as a consul or secretary at the British embassy in Lisbon (Macaulay 1947: 118). By the end of 1806, the impending transfer of the Portuguese Royal Family to Brazil prompted Hill to furnish Southey with unpublished documents accumulated over nearly a quartercentury. These documents, facilitated by his uncle, delved into the interior state of Brazil, meticulously detailing facets such as the Brazilian gold mines and emphasizing the imperative of safeguarding them from the clutches of Napoleon Bonaparte (Southey 1806a, 1806b, 1806c, 1807). In addition to his uncle’s contributions, Southey availed himself of various documents procured through diverse individuals encountered during his Portuguese sojourns. Southey’s oeuvre, embedded with a profound fascination for the Gothic-Medieval era and the Iberian Peninsula, underscored a reevaluation of the Middle Ages. This reevaluation was inextricably intertwined with the premise that the Middle Ages engendered lofty virtues, particularly evident in the case of Portugal, characterized by bravery, patriotism, courage, and pride. The Iberian national character, steeped in chivalric virtues and predicated upon honor, was construed by Southey as directly correlating with the conduct of Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors in South America and the legacy they bequeathed to their colonies. There was a direct connection for Southey between his interest in the Iberian medieval past and his understanding of the formation of Iberian virtues, which would later be brought to Brazilian soil. These virtues, construed through the prism of chivalry, were aroused in the medieval crusades, and resurged in the expansion movements of Portugal and Spain to Africa, India, Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. and the New World (Cañizares-Esguerra 2006: 3). For Southey, a direct correlation existed between warfare and the formation of national virtues and patriotism, elements he believed were forged during the medieval epoch. Due to attempts to understand the transition from a feudal to a commercial society, the Middle Ages went from being an obscure period in human history to being integrated into the progress of the societies in a universal point of view (Sweet 2004: 231). Consequently, Southey envisaged the development of South American territory, in broad contours, mirroring the trajectory witnessed in Europe, including the demarcation of territorial boundaries. While Brazil lacked a chronologically synchronous Middle Ages epoch akin to Europe’s, Southey postulated that colonial history could be analogously construed, given its societal organization —oft depicted as feudal—and the protracted conflicts, notably the Pernambucan Revolution, which contributed to forging Brazilian nationality (Varella 2021). The articulation of the “theory of the four stages” provided a conceptual backdrop for Southey’s historiographical endeavor. This theory, hewn in the eighteenth century, can be understood as one of the responses to the eighteenth-century interest in the social and sentimental (Phillips 2000). It engendered an inquiry into human nature and experiences, emblematic of the broader ambit of the Scottish Enlightenment. Aligned with this proposal for social investigation, the theory of civilizational stages delineated a developmental trajectory in human history, demarcating societies’ stages predicated on their mode of subsistence— transitioning from hunting and gathering to pastoralism, thence to agriculture, and culminating in commerce, in which progress in opulence brought with it refinement of manners and a civilized society. This framework, stemming from a profound interest in social sphere and ethnography, sought to elucidate why certain societies advanced toward civilization while others languished in barbarism or even savagery (Craig 2007: 142–3). The theory of civilizational stages is characterized by its direct correlation between a society’s mode of subsistence and its stage of civilization. Debates surrounding the origin of property, providentialist history, and the conflict between ancients and moderns were central in shaping this theory during the latter half of the eighteenth century (Meek 2010: 26). A significant contribution to the development of the theory of the four stages was the depiction of socalled savage peoples, prevalent in various regions of America, as exemplars of the state of nature. This portrayal illuminated the dynamic nature of the state of nature, demonstrating that humans were primarily hunters and gatherers (Meek 2010: 9–16). The history of Brazil, like much of the New World’s history, diverged from the narrative framework provided by European historiography for explaining human development on Earth, as it revealed a social state hitherto unrecorded. In a European point of view, the history of savages necessitated a different approach from that applied to civilized human history, recognizing that despite their predominantly hunter-gatherer lifestyle, they exhibited customs and behaviors marked by such barbarity that they could only be deemed savage (Pocock 2005). The characterization of whether a given society hewed to a hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, agricultural, or commercial mode of subsistence not only elucidated its economic trajectory but also underscored its moral progression (Macleod 2015: 364). Southey’s narrative, epitomized in the History of Brazil, resonated with the thematic preoccupations of the Scottish Enlightenment, particularly exemplified by William Robertson, concerning the examination of Iberian colonial society via the paradigm of the “four stages of civilization” and the critical Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. appraisal of the Spanish colonial enterprise in the Americas. In his History of America, Robertson played a significant role in solidifying the argument concerning Portuguese vice and the perceived necessity for British intervention, as it was seen as free from the vices shared by the Iberian peoples, particularly in matters of religion. This dichotomy, aligned with the Black Legend, consistently aimed to underscore the perceived backwardness and moral deficiencies of Spain and Portugal, particularly in their governance and administration practices, albeit with local variations, which were supposed to promote moral and material advancement in the colonized territories (Lima 2012: 41–3). The narratives crafted during this period helped shape key aspects of British historiography regarding America, which sought to comprehend the dynamics of societal progress and regarded the influence of Catholicism on the daily lives of Brazil’s inhabitants as an impediment to improvement (Lima 2012: 46). According to Southey, colonization, posited as both a moral and physiological endeavor, required the cultivation of moral virtues—forged through historical conflicts, particularly during the Gothic-Medieval period—and the resilience of transplanted racial constitutions to new climatic exigencies. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the etiology of diseases primarily centered on climatic conditions and individual constitutions, undergirded by the Hippocratic humoral theory. The bodily constitution was defined by the interaction of their humor with the climate or “air” in which they lived and the practiced diet. Additionally, it was consensual that exercise, sleep or wakefulness, evacuation (including bleeding), and emotions had a considerable impact on human health and temperament (Earle 2010: 694). The theory of the four humors, although with some reformulations, was one of the central principles of Western medicine until much of the nineteenth century, where health or disease depended on the balance between the humors and the external world. Within this understanding of medicine, disease would be the result of an internal imbalance caused mainly by climate or diet (Allamel-Rafin, Leplège, and Martire Junior 2011: 18–19). Diseases were commonly attributed to external agents that disrupted the internal equilibrium of individuals, with the manifestation of illness varying between individuals or transforming into different ailments. This understanding influenced Southey’s perspective on the necessity of interracial mixing, leading to his favorable appraisal of it. Race, climate, and diseases are intricately linked in the narrative of Brazil’s history, particularly in the context of colonization, wherein adaptation was imperative for both colonizers and indigenous peoples. Consequently, there existed a symbiotic relationship between racial mixture—instigated by European colonization of Brazil—and the potential for survival through immunization against diseases via blending. Both indigenous populations and European colonizers endured significant hardships due to diseases, which, in certain instances, led to the decimation of thousands of individuals simultaneously (Bewell 1999: XI). The theories surrounding acclimatization, which explored the ongoing process of transformation experienced by living organisms in environments different from those in which they originated and developed, underwent significant developments throughout the nineteenth century (Anderson 1992). The verb “acclimate” made its first recorded appearance in the English language in 1792. Over the ensuing decades, its usage gained prominence in both European and Brazilian contexts, reflecting a keen interest in studies on the effects of climate on organisms (Anderson 1992: 135; Caponi 2007; Lisboa 2013). Throughout the colonization of the New World, the concept of acclimatization was invoked to elucidate how Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. newcomers to specific climates or geographical regions were more susceptible to illness than individuals who had acclimated to those environments over time. It was believed that once newcomers became acclimated, their susceptibility to illness decreased. Hence, a salubrious climate did not necessarily guarantee fewer health concerns, as Southey noted, “wholesome as the air of Brazil is, it proved hurtful to many persons whose habits both of life and living had been formed in different temperature; even, says Piso, as plants will frequently die in transplantation, though their removal may have been to a richer soil and happier climate” (Southey 1810: 327). Southey posited that susceptibility to illness was determined by race, with different physiques being prone to distinct diseases (Fulford 2001). In this context, intermixture with races that were not only more acclimated but also immune to certain diseases emerged as the most effective means of mitigating racial vulnerability. In this regard, the formation of the Brazilian national identity was intricately linked to the theories of racial mixing and acclimatization to diseases. The imperative of racial mixing stemmed from the exigencies of acclimatization to newfound environments. Southey contended that the survival of Europeans in the American clime necessitated intermixture with indigenous populations to confer adaptability to the prevailing climate. Consequently, the process of racial blending not only endowed resilience against diseases but also facilitated the conquest of nature, heralding the genesis of a new race adapted to local exigencies. However, as evidenced by the condition of the Paulistas—a blend of Europeans and Amerindians—this process did not yield a flawless race but rather one that was somewhat more resilient to new historical and biological challenges. To summarize, the indigenous population would struggle to endure the changes in the Brazilian climate and the emergence of new diseases, just as the Europeans, despite their efforts, would fail to transform Brazil into a replica of Europe (Varella 2021). Impact Robert Southey is undeniably a well-known literary figure, with numerous studies dedicated to his poetry, his position within English literature, and his political and moral perspectives. However, within the realm of theory of history, the breadth of analyses conducted on his works is comparatively limited. While Southey authored three histories, such as the History of the Peninsular War (1823, 1827, and 1832), which did not garner significant critical acclaim, and the incomplete and handwritten History of Portugal, which received a critical study and genetic edition by Alexandre Dias Pinto in 2022, his History of Brazil stands out as an exception. Since its publication, this work has been canonized and is considered indispensable for any scholar of Brazilian history in the nineteenth century. Since the nineteenth century, Robert Southey has been hailed as the pioneer who assembled a disparate collection of documents into a cohesive narrative that bestowed meaning upon the Brazilian territory, envisioning himself as the Brazilian equivalent of Herodotus. Capistrano de Abreu even suggested that Southey’s History of Brazil served as a model in various aspects for Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen’s História geral do Brasil (General History of Brazil), leading to perceptions of the latter work as an imitation of Southey’s (Mollo 2005: 2). Manoel Bomfim further fueled the comparison between the two historians by casting unflattering epithets upon Varnhagen while lauding Southey as one of the true historians of the Brazilian history Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. (Gontijo 2003: 144). Since its inception, the History of Brazil has been continuously reassessed as a significant work, serving both as a reference for subsequent historiographical endeavors and as a meticulously researched scholarly contribution. Southey’s incorporation of the theory of the four stages to narrate Brazilian history, as a macro-narrative distinct from the history of Portugal, was pivotal in shaping interpretations of Brazilian history prior to European arrival. The prevailing interpretation suggested that indigenous inhabitants lived as savages, with widespread descriptions of cannibalism and a lack of sociability. However, unlike William Robertson’s utilization of the theory of the four stages in his History of America, Southey emphasized that American tribes, existing in a primitive hunter stage, exhibited as much diversity as civilized societies (Sebastiani 2013: 73). According to the seventeenth-century theory of civilization stages, societies in a wild state displayed a uniformity that was replaced in commercial societies by a diversity of national characteristics. In other words, the variety of customs and manners found in societies resulted from temporal progression and stage changes. The developmental stages posited that human progress transitioned from uniformity and simplicity to difference and complexity (Sebastiani 2013: 74). Consequently, there was a polarity between the variety found in European nations and the similarity of the American tribes, which were so similar that they could be deemed identical. For Robertson, within the American continent, there existed no cultural differentiation among its inhabitants; it was uniformly homogenous, contrasting with the visible cultural disparities expressed through the concept of nation in Europe (Sebastiani 2013: 95). Southey’s History of Brazil contained a significant nuance of savagery, characterized by the absence of attributes associated with European civilization. His meticulous descriptions of the customs and behaviors of indigenous peoples led to an exhaustive narrative, addressing no fewer than sixty indigenous tribes residing in Brazilian, Paraguayan, and Argentine territories. Southey emphasized that “the varieties of character and manners among savage tribes are as great as among civilized nations” (Southey 1819: 204). It’s notable that one of his contemporaries expressed shock, describing Southey’s work as “the most unreadable production of our time. Two or three elephant quartos about a single Portuguese colony!” (Lockhart 1824: 290). In Southey’s case, the particularities of his conception of history linked to a thorough investigation of the past facilitated a reevaluation of this central aspect of the theory of the four stages. Furthermore, the extensive detailing of the indigenous tribes’ way of life led to a saturation of the theory of civilization stages to the extent that the depiction and classification of societies—whether as hunters, shepherds, farmers, or commercial—did not entirely satisfy the need for a comprehensive description of native indigenous societies. This shift in analytical perspective largely resulted in a downplaying, within the History of Brazil, of the mode of subsistence in favor of delineating customs. However, the delineation of customs and manners remained as a form to establish connections between societies, identifying shared characteristics that transcended temporal and spatial boundaries. By highlighting these commonalities, Southey aimed to draw analogies that shed light on the level of civilization attained by various societies across different contexts. This comparative approach enabled Southey to juxtapose the harsh conditions of the Pineapple Village with those of Ancient Egypt. Despite the stark contrast in their circumstances, Southey remarked that achieving “a Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. degree of civilization high as that of ancient Egypt, must be attained before such physical circumstances can be overcome,” such as those experienced in the Pineapple Village where a significant portion of the population succumbed to diseases like smallpox, measles, or the effects of a nearby miasma from a lake (Southey 1819: 351). The New World was perceived by European intellectuals as a realm where the Black, European, and indigenous races intermingled, giving rise to a new racial identity, and where European diseases underwent transformations. For Southey, the biological amalgamation inherent in this racial mixture was the catalyst for the emergence of a distinct individual known as the Brazilian. Southey regarded this mixing of races as largely positive, particularly the intermingling of the indigenous with the Portuguese, which resulted in the mameluco. In the History of Brazil, the Paulistas, who were mamelucos, were depicted as inheritors of the Portuguese entrepreneurial spirit and indigenous tirelessness. Unlike many British narratives concerning the New World, which downplayed the indigenous portion of the Brazilian population (Lima 2012: 90), Southey decisively inserted them into the effective expansion of Portuguese territory, besides exploring indigenous nations as savages, a classic European approach to native populations of the New World. Consequently, Southey argued that while the Spanish, with their caste system, visibly declined, the Paulistas perpetuated the Portuguese spirit of great navigations. Without this racial mixture, he argued, Brazil would likely have succumbed to the same inertia that plagued the Spanish colonies (Varella 2021). The significance and recognition of the Paulistas, as emphasized by Southey, continued to resonate in Brazilian historiography throughout the twentieth century, particularly through the discipline of bandeirologia. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda noted a surge in studies on the Paulista past during the first half of the twentieth century, signifying a focused exploration of São Paulo and its inhabitants, the Paulistas. The development of bandeirologia represented a systematic examination of the history of the Paulistas and São Paulo, viewed as the cradle of Brazil’s origins. In 1946, the formalization of bandeirologia culminated in the establishment of the Bandeirologia Course, which involved the participation of eleven distinguished intellectuals, including Afonso de Taunay, Virgílio Corrêa Filho, Afonso Arinos, Alfredo Ellis Jr., Joaquim Ribeiro, and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, among others (Anhezini 2021). Thus, Southey stands at the forefront of a long-standing intellectual tradition that views the amalgamation of European, indigenous, and Black races as essential to the formation of the Brazilian identity. The nineteenth century was a pivotal period in Brazil, marked by the emergence of debates surrounding national identity, particularly within the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (IHGB). Newly independent from Portugal, Brazilian intellectuals grappled with the task of defining their identity within a global context where this issue was in focus. The IHGB played a pivotal role in this process by fostering studies and discussions on racial mixture and its impact on Brazilian society. One noteworthy contribution to this debate was Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius’s dissertation “Como se deve escrever a história do Brasil” (“How should the history of Brazil be written”) (1845), which won a contest promoted by the IHGB on the best approach to writing the ancient and modern history of Brazil. Martius delineated the roles of the Portuguese, Ethiopian, and Indian races in the formation of the Brazilian identity. While he emphasized the primacy of the Portuguese as the “discoverers, conquerors, and masters,” Martius acknowledged the contributions of the Indian and Ethiopian races to the physical, moral, and Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. civil development of the Brazilian populace, albeit to a lesser extent. Ultimately, Martius envisioned Portuguese blood as the dominant force that would assimilate the other races (Neves 2001). The correspondence between von Martius and the IHGB indicates that the Institute contemplated entrusting him with the implementation of the historiographical project outlined in his dissertation. However, von Martius declined the task. Nonetheless, the overall framework for the history of Brazil, as outlined by him, was realized through the publication of the História Geral do Brasil (General History of Brazil) by Francisco Adolfo Varnhagen (Guimarães 1988). This debate continued into the twentieth century, with discussions centered on the belief in the integrative power of miscegenation. From the late 1930s to the 1970s, intellectuals explored the feasibility of constructing a unified and progressive nation despite the heterogeneous nature of the population. Gilberto Freyre emerged as a prominent figure advocating for this affirmative vision in his seminal work Casa-grande & senzala (The Masters and the Slaves), wherein he portrayed the formation of a successful national identity based on the cultivation of a mestizo, organic, and cohesive national culture (Costa 2001). Interpretations From the perspective of theory of history, the first studies on Robert Southey were conducted by Maria Odila da Silva Dias in her master’s dissertation titled “O Brasil na historiografia romântica inglesa. Um estudo de afinidades de visão histórica: Robert Southey e Walter Scott” (“Brazil in English Romantic Historiography: A Study of Historical Vision Affinities: Robert Southey and Walter Scott”), published in the Anais do Museu Paulista (Annals of the São Paulo Museum) in 1967, and the book O fardo do homem branco: Southey, historiador do Brasil (um estudo dos valores ideológicos do império do comércio livre) (The White Man’s Burden: Southey, Historian of Brazil [A Study of the Ideological Values of the Free Trade Empire]), the result of her doctoral thesis, released in 1974. In both works, Dias presents a reading of the History of Brazil as a precursor of English Romanticism and highly concerned with historical revival. Maria Odila da Silva Dias’s reflections became hegemonic for the understanding of this historiographical work and the type of history written by Southey. Odila understood the historiographical period in which Southey’s History of Brazil was published as a transition between eighteenth-century rationalist historiography and a romantic one. In this sense, she argued, “the first volume of Southey’s History of Brazil, published in 1810, was a pioneering work in integrating the principles of romantic art and imagination into historical narrative, as were also many of its concepts about historical process and development” (Curly 1967: 11–12). There was, in this work, an affinity with “the ideas and imaginative style” disseminated in Scott’s trilogy about Scottish history, which began in 1814 with the publication of Waverley. Southey’s History of Brazil, therefore, integrates “the vanguard of romantic historiography” by emphasizing elements that even one of the great names of romanticism like Scott would only emphasize a few years later. This new style of narrative presupposed, in addition to the criticism and erudition cherished by rationalism, “a subjective effort of dramatic revival and a meticulous staging before the reader’s eyes of the living conditions of men from other times” (Curly 1967: 102, 12). Downloaded from www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com on Fri Dec 06 2024 19:11:27 Horário Padrão de Brasília. Access provided by Bloomsbury History Theory and Method Contributors. IP address: 179.101.194.132. Subject to the Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method terms of use, available at www.bloomsburyhistorytheorymethod.com/terms-and-conditions. This “imaginative interest” and “sympathetic effort,” argued Dias, sought to reveal “the society in which they lived, the spirit of their time” since all men reflected “the general tendencies of their time” (Curly 1967: 22). For Maria Odila, the concept of spirit of the age is central to the type of reconstruction of the past that both Britons intended, as the concept of spirit since they sought the “awareness of the diversity of historical development” (Curly 1967: 24). Therefore, “the essence of this art of communicating the spirit of a past era” was closely linked to the description of the “interrelations of the historical character, their feelings and intimate peculiarities, their mentality, their habits and customs, with the environment in which they lived, the landscape and the general ideas typical of their time and the individuals with whom they coexisted.” This characteristic of reliving the past polished the books of Scott and Southey with an epic tone (Curly 1967: 32). It was precisely “through an imaginative method that the historian could achieve the dramatic tone, the intrinsic unity of the lives of peoples and men of the past” (Curly 1967: 52). The drama of human lives in history was leveraged by the “romantics’ taste for social history,” that is, the description of customs, habits, and landscapes, which had its “roots in the eighteenth-century costume novel” (Curly 1967: 40, 62). The totality of an era would only be possible to be rescued by incorporating “economic and social factors into the lives of individuals and integrating the environment into the historical process itself” (Curly 1967: 46). Local color, in this sense, would be the “nuances of ideas and mentalities typical of an era that, intertwined with the narrative, reenacted the past in its material concreteness” (Curly 1967: 33). Odila also points out that there would be no higher goal than “capturing the ‘color of time’, through nuances that conveyed the atmosphere typical of the spirit of certain eras” (Curly 1967: 29). It is not surprising that Southey, like many writers of the early nineteenth century, did not explicitly identify himself as a Romantic (Craig 2007: 5; Ferber 2010: 7). Even as late as the end of the nineteenth century, the concept of Romanticism had not yet been fully developed, with studies employing this category only emerging in the ongoing twentieth century. Crane Brinton’s work The Political Ideas of the English Romanticists (1926) played a crucial role in advancing the understanding of Romanticism and shaping the perception of romantic social and political thought within British intellectual history. It was during the first decades of twenty century that scholars began to apply the concept of Romanticism to analyze Southey’s writings. Consequently, the paradigm of Romanticism emerged as a movement characterized by a shift away from its initial support for the French Revolution, which favored mechanistic and rationalist analyses, toward organic and historical approaches to society (Craig 2007: 5). Although Alfred Cobban’s Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the Eighteenth Century (1929) did not directly address Romanticism, it was influential in portraying the romantics, including Southey, as critics of the Enlightenment. This interpretation was further developed and popularized by Isaiah Berlin in “The Counter-Enlightenment” (1973), which posited the existence of a relatively cohesive Enlightenment movement that was countered by an equally unified Romanticism, thus delineating a clear divide between the intellectual trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Craig 2007: 4–6). These scholarly works provided important theoretical frameworks for Maria Odila da Silva Dias in her analysis of Southey’s History of Brazil.