Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present

Jeffrey Lesser is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Latin American History and Chair of the History Department at Emory University, Atlanta. He is the author of A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese-Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960–1980 (2007), which received an honorable mention for the Roberto Reis Prize from the Brazilian Studies Association; Negotiating National Identity: Minorities, Immigrants, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (1999), winner of the Best Book Prize from the Brazil section of the Latin American Studies Association; and Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (1994), which won the Best Book Prize from the New England Council on Latin American Studies.

• 1. Creating Brazilians; 2. From Central Europe and Asia: immigration schemes, 1822–70; 3. Mass migrations, 1880–1920; 4. The creation of Euro-Brazilian identities; 5. How Arabs became Jews, 1880–1940; 6. Asianizing Brazil: new immigrants and new identities, 1900–55; 7. Epilogue: the song remains the same.

'A crowning achievement by the premier historian of immigration to Brazil. In this highly readable book, Lesser shows how immigrants from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East helped create new ways of being white, of being nonwhite, and of being Brazilian, and in so doing, helped create modern Brazil.' George Reid Andrews, University of Pittsburgh