The Making of Brazilian Amazonian Societies: A Study in Ethnographic and Spatial History(Series Number 143 Cambridge Latin American Studies)

Amazonia presents the contemporary scholar with myriad challenges. What does it consist of, and what are its limits? In this interdisciplinary book, Mark Harris examines the formation of Brazilian Amazonian societies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing predominantly on the Eastern Amazon, what is today the states of Pará and Amapá in Brazil. His aim is to demonstrate how the region emerged through the activities and movements of Indigenous societies with diverse languages, cultures, individuals of mixed heritage, and impoverished European and African people from various nations. Rarely are these approaches and people examined together, but this comprehensive history insightfully illustrates that the Brazilian Amazon consists of all these communities and their struggles and highlights the ways the Amazon has been defended through partnership and alliance across ethnic identities.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; 1. Indigenous worlds on the Amazon river and the origins of the European sphere in the sixteenth century; 2. Colonial space and fluvial patterns: invaded territories of the eastern Amazon in the early seventeenth century; 3. Coming out the forests? Indigenous territories in the lower Xingu and Tocantins in the mid seventeenth century; 4. The making of the Sertão: indigenous regional networks in the late seventeenth century; 5. Riverine village and indigenous regional networks in the early eighteenth century; 6. Family, marriage and place in the riverine communities near the lower Amazon river; 7. 'In the forest we don't accept the grace of God': the spatialisation of Amazonian shamanism; Conclusion. The Sertão made Belém.

Review :
'This fabulous book takes the risk of situating itself in a watery and fluid space of improbable mediations to recount the formation of Amazonian riverbank societies in the 17th and 18th centuries. A must-read.' Carlos Fausto, author of Art Effects: Image, Agency and Ritual in Amazonia 'Our accumulated knowledge of Amazonian history and anthropology has deepened but also fragmented our understanding of this vast region. Harris's remarkable interdisciplinary synthesis provides an essential, unifying interpretation of diverse Indigenous responses to early Portuguese colonization.' Hal Langfur, author of Adrift on an Inland Sea: Misinformation and the Limits of Empire in the Brazilian Backlands 'Mark Harris did it again. After telling us in Rebellion on the Amazon that Amazonian peoples fought a devastating war, lost it militarily, but won the right to preserve their ways of life, now he treats us to The Making of Brazilian Amazonian Societies, unveiling further those ways of life in their impressive diversity region wide. Like a nutshell, an Amazonian canoe, he says, reveals it all: 'Within a canoe, there is an Amazonian world in miniature.' It is the Amazon with a British accent. Splendid!' Alcida Rita Ramos, author of Indigenism: Ethnic Politics in Brazil 'In this boldly original work of historical anthropology, Harris reveals how diverse peoples in the Eastern Amazon created interconnected worlds via rivers and forest paths. Making room for multiple histories and bringing Indigenous perspectives to the forefront, this is interdisciplinary scholarship at its most compelling.' Heather F. Roller, author of Contact Strategies: Histories of Native Autonomy in Brazil