L’utilisation des récits de voyage dans l’étude des relations raciales au Brésil (XIXe-XXe siècle)

This article offers a critical view about the use made by scholars of travels accounts (1808-1933) to describe race relations in Brazil (1808-1933). A review of the littérature shows a lack of critical examination of the descriptions made by european and american travellers on this subject. However some criteria for sorting data given by travellers can be found looking at the real conditions of these journeys. The main argument of the text is that travellers used to offer broad generalizations rather than real descriptions and that many of their ideas were in fact borrowed from their brazilian hosts, particularly those about “racial harmony”