The 200-year history of relations between Brazil and the United States is remarkable because, despite various fits of suspicion and tension, they have never fought a war against each other, and have often thought of themselves as allies. Though they have been long-time trading partners, aside from diplomats and a few scholars, their peoples have had rather vague notions of each other. Recent Brazilian immigrant communities and tourist visits have done little to raise the level of sophistication of Brazilians regarding the United States, and US citizens are lost beyond Rio and Sao Paulo. They know next to nothing of Brazilian history, geography, or politics. Often the two nations' political leaders seem to talk past, rather than to, each other. Oddly and contradictorily, the diplomatic archives of the two countries are full of well-crafted reports and analyses that provide historians with the means to write cogent studies of this or that period. Joseph Smith is well aware of the incongruous aspects of the relationship and provides a flowing, if uneven, account of it that summarises the literature, with emphasis on works in English. He provides a bonus in his frequent comments about British influence on Brazilian-American relations.
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