07 agosto 2007

the freest


"Brasil was a slave country whose contacts, over two centuries, had been closer with Africa than with Europe, and, unlike Spanish America, it raised few social barriers to racial intermarriage. Much of the slavery was informal, so free and servile met, made love and begat children. The cultures of Europe, Africa and the Indies blended.

Brasil was the nearest approach to a multiracial society in the world, and in most ways the freest, or most anarchic - though, unlike most of its Spanish American neighbors, generally non-violent. Long before the United States, Brazil was the world´s first melting-pot society. It was also, unlike Paraguay, a largely open one"

(Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, N. York: HarperCollins, 1991, pp. 654-55)

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