In defense of Brazil’s image abroad: Frederico José de Santa-Anna Nery and the writing of history in the education at the Empire

Abstract

The writing of the history of education in Brazil mobilized different subjects and responded to various objectives since the last decades of the 19^th century, when the first initiatives of this kind were recorded. Recently, the deciphering of these interpretations has nourished field researchers interested in understanding the ways in which the Brazilian historiographical-educational production was configured. Fernando de Azevedo is perhaps the intellectual most referred to by this community. Other authors have, however, been forgotten. Frederico José de Santa-Anna Nery, who dreamed about a civilization of the tropics, and lived most of his life in Europe, was one of them. With the intention of bringing to light this personage and invigorating the writing of the history of education, resorting to analyses developed at the Imperial period, Ipropose in this article to approach Santa-Anna Nery’s production based on two problems (comparison and statistics) and on the focus on primary education.