Brazil Through the Eyes of William James

William James, the oldest of five children, was the object of his father's greatest expectations, his favorite. By all accounts the young man struggled fiercely with this burden as he sought to discover his vocation. His early inclination was toward the fine arts, but pursuit of a career in this field was not encouraged. He then opted for the sciences, studied under Louis Agassiz, enrolled in medical school, and - still in some torment over what he was to do in life - seized the opportunity to join the Agassiz-led Thayer Expedition to Brazil in April 1865. During his stay there he found Brazil fascinating and specimen-collecting boring, yet his observations on the natural and human worlds are both accurate and acute.
In 1865 the United States was engulfed in the Civil War and its immediate aftermath. The Brazilian Empire under Emperor Pedro II was embarking on a war with Paraguay. The issues of race preoccupied New England intellectuals, the abolitionists, those who fought in the war (William James's two younger brothers) and those (like Agassiz) who derived theoretical and political implications from the conflict to formulate race theories. Meanwhile, the Empire, a mosaic of racial mixes, remained strongly committed to slavery.
Another set of critical intellectual issues concerned the conflict of static idealism and creationism versus the dynamic ideas on the transformation of nature that culminated in the theory of evolution, with its religious and philosophical implications. These ideas, hotly debated in the United States, also informed the Brazilian expedition.
Maria Helene Machado's Introduction explores these major themes and other contexts of the time - the culture and politics of American expansion, the contemporary notions of manhood, the quest for exoticism and the picturesque - while keeping track of the Expedition, its members, and its movements. She places William James among them and lets him speak his mind in personal unguarded letters and observations, enhanced by his sketches and drawings.
This bilingual English/Portuguese edition is unique and will be of interest to Brazilianists and William James scholars alike.