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The Forbidden Lands. Colonial Identity, Frontier Violence, and the Persistence of Brazil's Eastern Indians, 1750-1830. By Hal Langfur (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006)
This volume is a superb example of historical research informed by anthropological categories. As such it is 'ethnohistory' at its very best, clearly demonstrating the necessity of a proper cultural and social understanding of non-western societies for an adequate account of colonial processes.
Hal Langfur's history of the 'forbidden lands' of the Eastern Sertão (Minas Gerais) in Brazil is therefore of critical importance for historians and anthropologists, as well as scholars of Brazil and the 'frontier' in colonial systems more generally. Moreover, as Langfur himself notes (page 3) "my emphasis on independent Indians sets this work apart from a historiography which is routinely dismissive of their enduring significance." Although earlier historical writing has certainly acknowledged the ferocity of conquest and the dire demographic impacts of disease and slavery on native populations this has often led to a simple erasure, as historical agents, of the 'vanished' Indians. However, as Indian societies themselves have become more politically and culturally assertive and as their demographic situation has shown signs of stabilization and recovery, anthropologists no less than historians...