History at the Roots: Modernity, Cordiality and the Middle Class in <i>Raízes do Brasil</i>

Abstract

“Trouxemos de terras estranhas um sistema complexo e acabado de
preceitos, sem saber até que ponto se ajustam às condições da vida
brasileira e sem cogitar das mudanças que tais condições lhe imporiam.
Na verdade, a ideologia impessoal do liberalismo democrático jamais
se naturalizou entre nós.”

“We brought from foreign lands a complex and accomplished system of
precepts, without knowing to what point they were consistent with the
conditions of Brazilian life and without thinking about the changes these
conditions would impose on them. In truth, the impersonal ideology of
democratic liberalism was never naturalized among us.”

Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil (Roots of Brazil, 1936)