Seeing and touching the past: emotion and sentiment in John Armitage’s History of Brazil

Abstract

This article intends to show that the work History of Brazil, written in 1836 by the English merchant John Armitage, can be understood as an example of “historiography of presence”, as well as to analyze the cultural practices that are inherent in such kind of historiography. In order to achieve this goal, it develops a short overview of the modern history of rhetoric centered on some significant changes that characterized this intellectual tradition, especially those related to the psychological responses to a pathetic type of narrative. Subsequently, it explores the question of how and why the 19^th century Brazilian mainstream historians disregarded the parts of Armitage’s History of Brazil, in which a historiography of presence is prominent.