Transatlantic Neighborhood: Gilberto Freyre by Oliveira Martins

In order to understand Gilberto Freyre’s ideas about the history of Brazilian intimate relationships, we need to look at the interpretations of Portuguese history by the nineteenth-century Portuguese historian Joaquim Pedro Oliveira Martins. Oliveira Martins popularized a well-known account of Portuguese history that addressed the importance of its transatlantic endeavors. In this chapter, I will examine how this idea can be used to better understand the cultural connections between Brazil and Portugal and their relationship with the coasts, seas, and oceans on both sides of the Atlantic. I will explore how Freyre used the cultural arrangements described by Oliveira Martins in his works, História de Portugal (1879) and O Brasil e as Colônias Portuguesas (1880), to explain the human-environment relationship that led to the formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic.