The Brazilian backlands (sertões) hold a powerful grip on both the scholarly and popular imaginations. Although the arid, drought-prone shrublands of the northeast are often the first to come to mind, Hal Langfur shifts the focus to the vast “seas” of loosely governed peoples and territories in the southeast, which surrounded more consolidated “islands and archipelagos of inland settlement” (10). In his latest book, Langfur looks at how these critical “internal frontiers” became increasingly vexing flashpoints after 1750, a period when Brazil’s territorial consolidation “turned in on itself” (9).
Langfur contributes to a growing body of literature that unsettles key misconceptions about early modern empires and territorial expansion. By focusing on “information gathering,” Langur reveals a disconnect between the Portuguese crown’s hegemonic aspirations and more varied realities on the ground. The book reminds us that it necessarily relied upon liminal—and hardly disinterested—actors who found themselves “at the nexus of royal directives, local realities, and personal ambition” (5).
The book is divided into four parts that largely correspond to expeditions to key frontiers in the southeastern captaincy of Minas Gerais. The first zeroes in on the southwest and southeast sertões, where authorized individuals and military parties set out to open, occupy, and eliminate illegal mining operations. A particularly intriguing figure is Inácio Pereira Correia, a magniloquent frontiersman and wealthy merchant who vowed to search for gold and capture runaway Please confirm change in wording or revise. “Enslaved person”, or here, “enslaved people”, is the preferred term for this journal, and if it is not used, the choice to use other terminology must be explainedenslaved people. Langfur demonstrates how Pereira, with the help of a gifted amanuensis, turned his misadventures into heroic tales of conquest. The fact that this vassal managed to obtain Please confirm or revise wording here.large tracts of law prohibited by the crown shows how savvy intermediaries “maneuver[ed] in a system that not only co-opted men like [them]” but could also be bent to serve their own interests (71).
The second half of the book shifts to the west and northwest, looking at scientific reconnaissance missions that occurred in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The author reminds us that state-sponsored mineralogists and naturalists applied their knowhow to enduring preoccupations with securing and exploiting the backlands. Crucially, these men of science “absorbed,” rather than abandoned, older bodies of knowledge (181). The interdependence of elite and plebeian knowledge becomes even more pronounced in these latter chapters. For instance, José Vieira Couto, a Coimbra-educated bacharel tasked with validating claims of fantastic mineral wealth, depended on the expertise of Black and multiracial prospectors such as Isidoro de Amorim Pereira. These uneasy partnerships led to an “informational alchemy” that “destabilized Portugal’s drive to expand its imperial domain” (214).
Langfur draws upon a rich evidentiary base consisting of military communiques, scientific field notes, maps, and Inquisition records. These materials supply grist for the book’s “aggregated microhistories” (15) that expertly balance granularity of detail with a broad assessment of the events that link the peripheries and centers of empire. Langfur’s engaging storytelling is especially commendable, not least due to the varied cast of characters. The author contributes meticulously researched reinterpretations of figures deeply embedded in regional mythology. Among these is Manoel Henriques, a prospector better known by the villainous epithet the “Gloved Hand” (Mão de Luva). Reexamining him against the documentary record, Langfur challenges his portrayal as either a serious threat to colonial authority or a “Hobsbawmian social bandit” (128). The author presents an especially balanced appraisal of the German ethnologist and naturalist Prince Maximillian Alexander von Wied-Neuwied (1782–1867), underscoring how the nobleman’s ideas buttressed racial determinism and contributed to environmental harm (275).
From a still wider angle, the book questions the teleological assumptions that often frame the retelling of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Brazilian history. Langfur asserts that scholars have focused too narrowly on the supposed modernizing impulse of the Portuguese crown, especially after the opening of Brazilian ports to foreign trade in 1808 and the influx of new ideas. However, the nearly simultaneous declaration of war against Indigenous forest dwellers—justified by invoking older notions of “just” wars against cannibalism—has been largely overlooked.
This book is a significant contribution to the historiography on early modern empires and Luso-Brazilian history. Hal Langfur’s work powerfully enhances our understanding of knowledge producers, personal ambition, and territorial expansion and is well positioned to inspire cutting-edge work on these topics in the post-independence period.
