In all the history of Latin America, few historians have been so influential as the Brazilian scholar Joao Capistrano de Abreu. Now, for the first time, his central work, a classic of historical literature, appears in a sharp, clear English translation.

In Chapters of Brazil's Colonial History, Capistrano de Abreu created an integrated history of Brazil in a landmark work of scholarship that is also a literary masterpiece. Breaking with previous writers, who had taken a plodding governor-after-governor approach that rested upon administration and politics, he offers a startlingly modern analysis of the past, based on the role of the economy, settlement, and the occupation of the interior.

A master of Brazil's ethnographic landscape, he provides detailed sketches of daily life for Brazilians of all stripes. Capistrano de Abreu first won acclaim for a linguistic study of a Brazilian Indian language; he brings that knowledge to play as he describes the interaction between colonial settlers, African slaves, and native inhabitants, as cultures mixed in the creation of the modern nation.

He also stresses the role of the physical landscape and environment in ways that presaged contemporary developments in historical scholarship.