Essays in comparative history are risky ventures. Nowhere has this become more evident than in the literature on slavery. Yet comparisons continue to be made, implicitly if not explicitly. Post-abolition race relations is an area in which comparisons are equally tempting—indeed, virtually unavoidable— and equally difficult to handle. Perhaps by more careful attention to the framework of comparison we can begin to arrive at more testable hypotheses. In this paper an attempt is made to compare certain features of race relations since abolition in the United States and Brazil. The emphasis will be on differences.

Since 1964 Brazil has been governed by successive regimes dominated by the armed forces and presided over by army generals. The men in charge of Brazil's destiny are professional officers, and like their counterparts in the neighboring Spanish American states they conceive of their governance as an obligation as much as a privilege, if not more. The professional officer in Latin America today is as far removed from his nineteenth century counterpart as ballistic missile systems are from the ballista.

During the last fifty years a considerable amount of material relating to the institutional structure of the Spanish colonial city in America has appeared. In most instances, however, this material directed itself to a consideration of colonial city governments shortly after the Conquest or during the zenith of the empire. Of equal interest should be a consideration of these institutions at the moment of their disintegration, that is, during the Spanish American Wars of Independence.

In late November of 1807 the Portuguese government was loaded on to a fleet of naval and merchant vessels, transported across the South Atlantic and deposited in Rio de Janeiro. On board were fourteen members of the Royal Family; the Counsellors of State; ministers; Justices of the Court of Appeals and the High Court; the upper echelons of the army and navy; the hierarchy of the church; a full quota of high society; a respectable contingent of the professional, scientific, literary, artistic and business elements; a horde of bureaucrats; and as many rank and file citizens as could secure passage. Also on board were the contents of the royal treasury; the store of diamonds derived from the crown monopoly; silver plate, jewels, books, cash and other portable assets; furnishings for a royal chapel; the royal library; a printing press; and a mass of government records.

While the seventies will see a continuing debate over the merits of alternative development strategies, histories of Latin America's industrial progress over the past two or three decades can now be filed under ‘import substitution’. Bruton explains, ‘In the narrowest terms, import substitution refers simply to the take-over of an existing domestic market from the foreign producer by prohibiting his imports in one way or another’.

During the three years since its publication, The Mexican Revolution Federal Expenditure and Social Change Since 1910 has gained an important place on the bookshelves not only of Mexicanists but also of students of social change in general. The appearance of a revised edition in paperback which proudly announces that it won the Bolton Prize as the best book in the field of Latin American history in 1967 is further testimony to the esteem in which this work is held by James Wilkie's colleagues. It seems appropriate at this juncture to re-examine the analysis to determine whether the test of time confirms the eulogies of a few years ago.