Czech Traveler Alberto Vojtěch Frič and the Efforts to Protect Brazilian Natives at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Essay in Entangled History
Abstract
The text deals with a moment at the turn of the 19th and 20th century when the paths of Czech and Brazilian societies crossed. Vojtěch Frič, Czech adventurer and traveler, botanist and anthropologist, during his stay in southern Brazil in 1907-1908 enthusiastically engaged in the efforts to protect the native inhabitants from the encroachments of German settlers on their territories.
The text explores the sequence of events that led to Frič's denunciation of these practices during the Congress of Americanists in Vienna, and to the subsequent debates in Brazil that led to the establishment of the Indian Protection Service in 1910. It demonstrates how seemingly separate events and developments connected with each other within the frame of the increasingly interconnected world on both sides of the Atlantic.