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The Uruguay (A Historical Romance of South America) by José Basilio da Gama, translated by Sir Richard F. Burton, revives one of the great poetic landmarks of the Portuguese colonial world and its extraordinary afterlife in nineteenth-century Britain. First published in 1769, Gama’s O Uraguai recounts the War of the Seven Reductions, a mid-eighteenth-century conflict that pitted Portuguese and Spanish forces against the Tupi-Guarani and their Jesuit allies. In neoclassical blank verse, the poem transforms a bloody frontier war into a lyrical vision of the New World: Guarani warriors stand against European artillery, indigenous heroines face tragic fates, and the South American landscape itself becomes a stage for prophecy, sacrifice, and loss. For Brazilian readers of the independence era, O Uraguai became a symbol of national identity, elevating the Indian warrior to the role of cultural hero.

Sir Richard Burton—consul, explorer, and one of the Victorian age’s most daring translators—brought the poem into English during his Brazilian sojourn of the 1860s. His rendering, vigorous and idiosyncratic, reflects both his mastery of Portuguese and his own sharp anti-Jesuit sentiments, which sometimes heighten the polemical edge of Gama’s text. Complete with Burton’s extensive preface and critical commentary, this edition presents for the first time in print the Huntington Library manuscript of his translation. Garcia and Stanton provide a scholarly introduction, notes, and bibliography that situate the poem within its historical context, trace its reception in Brazil and abroad, and illuminate Burton’s complex engagement with colonial history and native culture. At once an eighteenth-century neoclassical romance and a Victorian artifact of translation, The Uruguay is indispensable for readers interested in Luso-Brazilian literature, the history of empire, and the global circulation of texts across languages and centuries.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.