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Europe Looks at the New World: Alexander Caldcleugh in Brazil

Julio Jeha

From Cabral in 1500 to the English Alexander Caldcleugh in the 1 9 th century, men and women visited Brazil in search of a land with mysterious and charming attributes, where-so they imagined-natives in a state of Edenic purity lived in harmony with nature and ignored the possibilities that their land held. Among the Brazilian provinces, Minas Gerais appeared as the most gifted, and its name announced a region to explore, a promise of quick and certain fortune. If the beautiful landscape guaranteed Rio de Janeiro's worldwide fame and turned it into an icon of the new land, the abundance of minerals made the province an index of the colony's riches.

Alexander Caldcleugh, a little known Englishman, visited Brazil, Buenos Aires, and Chile from 1819 to 1821, following a representative of the British crown. Caldcleugh wrote Travels in South America , where he depicted the Brazilian fauna and flora, landscape and riches, mores and habits. Everything interested him, either out of personal curiosity or as research field for English scientists, who, inexplicably, ignored this "garden of the world."

This report interests us for two main reasons: first, because it is a look from outside that analyzes and describes us to the centers, that sees us as an object that one intends to evaluate according to economical and political interests. Second, because it provides us one of the first images we had of ourselves, which, because of that and up to a certain point, determined and determines our identity. Just as Caminha's letter brings in itself a foundational act inscribed in the Brazilian imaginary, the travelogues contributed to form and reinforce the image that Brazilians have of themselves.