The letters of British immigrant George Stewart Boddy about his life in the colony of Assunguy, province of Paraná, Brazil – second half of the 19th century

Abstract

In the 1860s, European immigrants from different origins, including the British, came to Paraná. Many returned to their countries, went to other provinces, died. Some remained, including George. This article takes as source a set of 14 letters that he wrote to his family in England, between the years of 1868 and 1910, and data supplied by his European and Brazilian descendants, the guardians of the family memory. Taking the work organized by Angela de Castro Gomes (2004) as reference, we discuss the epistolary sociability maintained by George, a source whose nature is problematized from a selection of theoretical reflections proposed by authors such as: Pierre Bourdieu (2001), Giovanni Levi (2001), Teresa Malatian (2013), Philippe Artières (1998) e Pierre Nora (1993).