Making of Brazilian Amazonian Societies - A Study in Ethnographic and Spatial History

Amazonia presents the contemporary scholar with myriad challenges. What does it consist of, and what are its limits? In this interdisciplinary book, Mark Harris examines the formation of Brazilian Amazonian societies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing predominantly on the Eastern Amazon, what is today the states of Pará and Amapá in Brazil. His aim is to demonstrate how the region emerged through the activities and movements of Indigenous societies with diverse languages, cultures, individuals of mixed heritage, and impoverished European and African people from various nations. Rarely are these approaches and people examined together, but this comprehensive history insightfully illustrates that the Brazilian Amazon consists of all these communities and their struggles and highlights the ways the Amazon has been defended through partnership and alliance across ethnic identities.

List of contents

Introduction; 1. Indigenous worlds on the Amazon river and the origins of the European sphere in the sixteenth century; 2. Colonial space and fluvial patterns: invaded territories of the eastern Amazon in the early seventeenth century; 3. Coming out the forests? Indigenous territories in the lower Xingu and Tocantins in the mid seventeenth century; 4. The making of the Sertão: indigenous regional networks in the late seventeenth century; 5. Riverine village and indigenous regional networks in the early eighteenth century; 6. Family, marriage and place in the riverine communities near the lower Amazon river; 7. 'In the forest we don't accept the grace of God': the spatialisation of Amazonian shamanism; Conclusion. The Sertão made Belém.

About the author

Mark Harris is Professor and head of the School of Philosophical, Historical and Indigenous Studies at Monash University. He is also an honorary research fellow at the University of St Andrews. His book Life on the Amazon won the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship Monographs Prize, and Rebellion on the Amazon received an Honourable Mention for the Warren Dean Memorial Prize.

Product details

• Authors: Mark Harris, Mark (Monash University Harris
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 30.11.2025
• EAN: 9781009654067
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0965406-7
• No. of pages: 350
• Series: Cambridge Latin American Studies
• Subjects: Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Para, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, Brazil, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / Latin America / General, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Indigenous Peoples, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, 17th century, c 1600 to c 1699, Social and cultural history, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, Social and cultural anthropology, Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700, Archaeology by period / region, History of the Americas, Amapa, Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies, C 1600 To C 1700, C 1700 To C 1800, Indigenous peoples / Indigeneity