| This paper responds to but also seeks to transcend the issues raised in Ross Forman's essay "When Britons Brave Brazil" through exploration and analysis of the Brazilian literary rejoinder to nineteenth-century British influence in Brazil. While Forman merely "explores the [literature of] political and economic connections with Latin America's largest country and where such fiction places Brazil in the British colonial imaginary," my paper argues that interactions with the British Empire contributed to a burgeoning Brazilian nationalism. My critical stance questions the longstanding Brazilian nationalist theory of three-race syncretism, which argues that Brazilian nationalism was formed exclusively by the unique fusion of Amerindian, African, and Iberian influence. Rather, I envision and support a reading of the literature of Anglo-Brazilian relations as a site of Brazilian national resistance to British imperialist projects, leading to Brazilian identity as counterpoint to a threatening foreign presence and persistent interference. |
