The french in Brazil: the ideas from the 19th century, habits and customs in Pernambuco province (1840-1850)

Abstract

This is a study about the French presence in Brazil during the first half of the 19th century. Among the notable French found in the history of Pernambuco is Louis Léger Vauthier, a French engineer who arrived in Recife in 1840, hired by the president Francisco do Rego Barros to modernize the capital of the province. During his time in Brazil, Vauthier registered in a diary his impressions collected from observations of the province everyday life, the expectations in relation to the inhospitable land and the moments of discomfort before such a stubborn simple life, not to say a petty life. This work was posthumously titled The Personal Diary of the Engineer  Vauthier. The document provides  a detailed account of Recife social life, and more generally, it communicates the existing relations in the Brazilian Empire, still surrounded by the colonial heritage, besides drawing a detailed picture on the way of living and acting of the lower social strata, that is, of free and poor men and of slaves, freed or not. It is a study developed from the perspective of the history of education in that it aims to demonstrate that the presence of Vauthier in Pernambuco contributed to the adoption of civilized habits then required by the local elite, who saw the French manners as an ideal model of education.