However, the biggest differences are those found in the first and third editions. Otherwise, the edition could be called the definitive one. Indeed, it was the last and the main change in the text that was made during the author's lifetime.
Numbers were added to the posthumous editions, 13 13 This is the case with the edition, which is the basis for the Brazilian edition published in Paris: Panckoucke, , p.
We do not intend to summarize all the changes that, in many cases, involve entire chapters, or even parts of chapters that were changed or moved. In any case, the best-known changes were the sections introduced in the edition. Raynal follows that author's line by pointing out the aggravation of that dependence after and the Methuen Treaty, which, he wrote, resulted in the virtual economic ruin of Portugal, but he foresees a possibility of change following the Lisbon Earthquake of It was due to this relationship that, for these thinkers, the study of nature took on a political dimension.
In the words of Abbot Raynal As this author saw it, the close connection between the two forces of man and nature produced a causal relationship, and was the only factor able to explain the American Revolution" FURTADO, , p. However, the most substantial differences between the editions of the Histoire des deux Indes have to do with the fact that the edition includes much more information and new value judgments on the populations of Portuguese South America in general and the Portuguese administration in particular.
Regarding the latter aspect, although Raynal's opinion on Pombaline trading companies is negative due to their monopolistic nature, which went against the belief in the benefits of free trade, in general, his assessments of Pombaline policy are substantially more positive than in the previous editions and, on several matters, the statements are highly unusual and even surprising. We will focus on some those issues here. First, we will examine how the inhabitants of Portuguese America are described and analyzed, both the indigenous peoples and those who arrived in the wake of European colonization.
Let us start with the Amerindians. Paris: Raynal was educated in Jesuit colleges. He was stripped of that post, and left the order when he pronounced his third vow, of obedience to the Pope, although we do not know exactly what prompted him to do so. GOGGI, , p. Muriel Brot has compared the two texts and pointed out that the deletions and additions Raynal made changed the meaning of the original. Unlike Brot, by comparing the three editions we intend to show how, based on the deletions and small but significant additions, Raynal's view of the Amerindians visibly changed in each of them.
Raynal calls the natives "Brazilians," because it was they, and not the colonists, who were the "naturels du pays," and that is how he refers to them throughout the book. It is interesting to note that this name appears in the previous literature, 19 19 The use of this term has many other precedents, such as Charles Dellon, who refers to them that way in his passage on Brazil in the famous Relation de l'Inquisition de Goa.
Leiden: Daniel Gaasbeek, Caixa In contrast, by describing the Amerindians as noble savages living in a natural state of peace and happiness, Raynal makes the term Brazilian highly positive. The importance and magnitude of the indigenous peoples in the whole of the text is not accidental, because they stand in contrast to the Europeans, descripted as corrupt and avaricious, perverted by the greed caused by mercantilist trade.
The expropriation of that myth was linked to a broader understanding of history, characterized by being part of a process of civilization in which that primitive indigenous society corresponded to the first stage of human civilization.
Wicked company: freethinkers and friendship in pre-revolutionary Paris. According to Histoire des deux Indes , innocence, purity, well-being, abundance and felicity reigned supreme in that natural state. The Amerindians knew nothing about work and "manger, chanter, danser c'est tout leur bonheur; ils n'en connaissent pas d'autre. It is interesting to note that in the first edition of book 9, the author used the terms "barbarian" and "barbarity" about eleven times, in seven of which, for the most part, they are associated with and describe European nations Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France and Britain , and in two they are specifically used to describe the Inquisition , l.
The Amerindians are only referred to as barbarians four times, and in the latter two, only to criticize the use of that term by the Europeans when referring to them. This primitivist idyll was threatened by the arrival of the Europeans and their lust for Mammon.
Les illustrations dans l'Histoire des deux Indes. Instead, while a philosopher engraves a condemnation of the desire for gold in a pillar, men are being violently hauled off to work, probably in the mines, while in the background, Portuguese or Spanish ships lie at anchor awaiting the fruits of their toil to carry it to Europe, supplying their trade circuits. A concept that the Enlightenment scholars held dear was the policed state, signifying civility, maturity of political and social institutions and symptomatic of moral progress and the advance of civilization in any society.
According to Raynal, nationalism was a structuring concept, and over the centuries essential to the cohesion of policed states , l. But even if they were unfamiliar with patriotism, the Amerindians could have a more policed society, even more so than the European states at that time, which considered themselves more socially and politically advanced.
This philosophical novelty is said to arise from the opposition of a thesis that Brazilians are inferior to Europeans and the demonstration of its antithesis that Brazilians are superior to Europeans Brot, , p. Raynal once again inverts the civilized world of the Europeans and the barbarism of the natives by playing with the terms policed state, progress, savagery and errant.
He says that the Jesuits taught the Amerindians a love for justice, brotherly charity and horror at human blood, giving them humanity. BROT, , p. The concept of the policed state was attributed to the Brazilian natives and denied to the Portuguese and Spanish empires, making clear the moral basis on which the history of humanity was being judged.
However, although Raynal uses those travelers to describe indigenous customs, this does not always mean that the meanings he attributes to them are the same found in his sources, which reveals the innovative nature of Histoire des deux Indes. A paradigmatic example that denotes the richness of the interpretive keys that the book permits is his analysis of the constant state of war that reigned among the small and numerous local tribes.
The subtraction has to do with the information that the Amerindians ate those savages. Paris: , p. In fact, this process can be clearly seen since the first edition. Also, in a passage that states that the Brazilians began eating Europeans, Raynal gives a justification for that: it was a reaction to the enslavement to which they had been subjected by the latter. This is yet another reversal of the roles traditionally attributed to the savage Brazilians and civilized Europeans, suggesting that the former "sont moins barbares et plus intelligentes que les Portugais" , l.
However, in the edition, Raynal reverses his narrative about cannibalism. In the more policed nations, the prisoners were exchanged after peace was agreed; in semi-barbarous ones, they were enslaved, and in the most savage ones, they were tortured, butchered and eaten. The savages who adhered to cannibalism are now considered bizarre, murderous maniacs, afflicted with some kind of disease. The victims are no longer eaten within a previously prescribed ritual but hunted and cornered in the forest, where the horde kills them, falls on their corpses and devours them , l.
On one hand, this condemnation reflected the difficulty French Enlightenment thinkers had in taking a positive view of cannibalism in the Americas Brot, BROT, Muriel. In this edition, Histoire des deux Indes turns anthropophagy into a metaphor that is then then equated with laziness, which is extremely harmful to policed societies that should value labor and working for a living , l. Meat was eaten raw or barely cooked when they had fire p.
If the explicit condemnation of cannibalism involves a negative view of indigenous societies, treating it as a metaphor transfers that negativity to the supposedly civilized European nations, while reinforcing the reversal of the values traditionally attributed to the two societies. This metaphor, which takes up nearly two pages of the edition, disappears in the edition to give way to a vehement condemnation of anthropophagy. In contrast, the vehement condemnation of anthropophagy is accompanied by a substantial decrease in references to the policed state of indigenous societies, revealing the weakening of this teaching and moralizing interpretive key, so central to the text of the Histoire des deux Indes in its first edition - that the Amerindians were more civilized than the European invaders.
Brot's analysis of cannibalism is therefore only valid for the edition, exposing the weakness of interpretations that focus on just one of the editions. In the edition, all of these absences allow Raynal to go even further and describe the natives as atheists who only devoted their esteem to the brave warriors of their own tribe who slaughtered their enemies , l.
Lectures de Raynal. We cannot understand this section without paying attention to the fact that the circles of Diderot and Baron d'Holbach adhered to atheism. The edition also omits a conjecture that it would be possible to discover the origins of native Americans by studying African and Asian languages , l. There is a small but revealing change in this last section in the following edition, published in The expression "our invasion" reflects an even more radical position regarding the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas.
First, Raynal emphasizes its negative and illegitimate character of conquest and then takes on for himself and, by extension, the other Enlightenment philosophers, collective responsibility for that disaster. Nevertheless, this observation disappears completely from the edition , l. One topic that enables us to distinguish how Histoire des deux Indes treats Brazilians and blacks is slavery. It is noteworthy that although there is a general condemnation of slavery, both of Amerindians and Africans, it is nuanced in the case of Brazil.
We will see why. L'Histoire des deux Indes: sources et structures d'un texte polyphonique. There, Raynal charges that the Portuguese ripped thousands of slaves from the "unhappy" shores of Africa, as they made up most of the merchandise taken from that continent, where they were purchased in exchange for baubles, trinkets and bits of glass and later sold in the colony in exchange for the gold, tobacco, spirits and cotton produced there , l. First, let us take a look at what is said about the enslavement of the natives so we can establish a comparison with the way the blacks were treated.
According to Raynal, the Amerindians were the first to be enslaved by the Portuguese, particularly in the Amazon, when the religious orders established themselves there. In that region, the settlers planted a cross and charged the Brazilians with taking care of it. If they disobeyed, they were then reduced to servitude. This entire section, which clearly condemns indigenous slavery, is still present in the edition , l.
However, completely different from contemporary literature, in the edition, black Africans are presented to the reader in harmonious symbiosis with the native Brazilians. The description begins with a warning in which Raynal states that slavery was one of the factors that influenced the Portuguese national character, from which a critique of that institution exudes.
Then, he distinguishes between the way slaves were employed in Portugal - in domestic service and working the land - and in Brazil, where they had been introduced in to supply manpower for processing sugarcane. From then on, the number of blacks had multiplied prodigiously. That incapacity is said to have forced the colonists to transfer the heavier tasks to the Africans and, according to him, the Europeans even encouraged the natives to take on less brutish occupations and, that way, supplied them with some means of subsistence probably a reference to cassava and maize.
Although this might surprise the reader, in his view this resulted in a compromise that was so positive that it was highly advantageous for all , l. The edition shortens, changes and softens this passage. The introduction of slave labor moves up to , the increased number of slaves is linked to the growing consumption of sugar, and the text limits itself to stating that the "bras nerveux du negre" were added to the "aux travaux languissants des Indiens, qu'elle prit des accroissements" , l.
In the edition, the second reference to African slaves appears in the section on Bahia. The edition introduces small but significant changes to this section. Black slaves are now referred to generically as noirs blacks , without making any further direct comments about slavery in this part of the work. The text states that, instead of living in opulence, they lay about after paying the prescribed tariff no longer a tariff on their labor , underscoring the fact that blacks could live in Brazil without working, exploiting the labor of their slaves.
The change in the last sentence of this paragraph is also very suggestive. This is another surprising statement: that Africans themselves, when freed, enslaved their fellow men, which is not even questioned or denounced in a text that advocates the freedom of Africans.
The edition eliminates this part but replaces it with one that is even more astonishing. Without referring to any particularly location, it states that in Brazil, there was no specific law for the slaves, who were judged according to the common law.
Because the masters were obliged to feed their captives, they set aside a piece of land that they could farm for their own benefit on holidays and Sundays. Even so they could demand it at a set price, set by custom, whenever they felt oppressed. This was said to be the reason why, despite the ease of hiding out on that vast continent, there were no escaped slaves in Brazil! The few exceptions occurred in the mining region, and there, the fugitives, living in remote areas and poverty, only produced enough for their own subsistence , l.
If the first piece of information - about the existence of a "peasant breach" 30 30 Historians of Brazil only rediscovered this practice in the s. However, they had access to military posts in batallions reserved exclusively for people of their color , l.
Although there are prior allusions to it in the travel literature, we can identify in the pages of Histoire des deux Indes the birth of the interpretation of the mildness of Brazilian slavery which, much later, would find an echo and be immortalized in the works of Gilberto Freyre who cites it , and for a long time became predominant in Brazilian historiography.
However, Freyre only cites Reynal sic in regard to other matters p. One of the first to find this information in Raynal's writing and reproduce it may have been G. Hegel, according to whom the Portuguese were more humane than the Dutch, Spanish and British.
This made it easier for slaves to obtain manumission in Brazil, where there was a large number of free blacks. Madrid: Tecnos, , p.
Although Jonathan Israel's statement that Histoire des deux Indes "carries anti-slavery on to a new level of mobilization and combat" and "derived [from it] the passionate The first of these liberties is, after reason, the distinguishing characteristic of man. Brutes are chained up, and kept in subjection, because they have no notion of what is just or unjust, no idea of grandeur or meanness. But in man, liberty is the principle of his vices or his virtues.
None but a free man can say, I will, or I will not; and consequently none but a free man can be worthy of praise, or be liable to censure. Without liberty, or the property of one's own body, and the enjoyment of one's mind, no man can be either a husband, a father, a relation, or a friend; he hath neither country, a fellow citizen, nor a God.
The slave, impelled by the wicked man, and who is the instrument of his wickedness, is inferior even to the dog, let loose by the Spaniard upon the American; for conscience, which the dog has not, still remains with the man. He who basely abdicates his liberty, gives himself up to remorse, and to the greatest misery which can be experienced by a thinking and sensible being.
If there be not any power under the heavens, which can change my nature and reduce me to the state of brutes, there is none which can dispose of my liberty. God is my father, and not my master; I am his child, and not his slave. How is it possible that I should grant to political power, what I refuse to divine omnipotence?
Will these eternal and immutable truths, the foundation of all morality, the basis of all rational government, be contested? They will, and the audacious argument will be dictated by barbarous and sordid avarice. Behold that proprietor of a vessel, who leaning upon his desk, and with the pen in his hand, regulates the number of enormities he may cause to be committed on the Coasts of Guinea; who considers at leisure, what number of firelocks [guns] he shall want to obtain one Negro, what fetters will be necessary to keep him chained on board his ship, what whips will be required to make him work; who calculates with coolness, every drop of blood which the slave must necessarily expend in labor for him, and how much it will produce; who considers whether a Negro woman will be of more advantage to him by her feeble labours, or by going through the dangers of child-birth.
You shudder! But, it is alleged, that in all regions, and in all ages, slavery hath been more or less established. I grant it; but what doth it signify to me, what other people in other ages have done? Are we to appeal to the customs of antient [ sic ] times, or to our conscience? Are we to listen to the suggestions of interest, of infatuation, and of barbarism, rather than to those of reason and of justice?
If the universality of a practice were admitted as a proof of it's [ sic ] innocence, we should then have a complete apology for usurpations, conquests, and for every species of oppression. But it is urged, that in Europe, as well as in America, the people are slaves. The only advantage we have over the Negroes is, that we can break one chain to put on another.
It is but too true; most nations are enslaved. The multitude is generally sacrificed to the passions of a few privileged oppressors. Commerce and Trade. Denis Diderot — French philosopher, writer, and critic. See all related overviews in Oxford Reference ».
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