Peter Furtado > Quotes

“From the 16th to the 19th centuries a total of 10.7 million slaves survived the Atlantic crossing from Africa to the Americas, and (according to recent calculations by historians David Eltis and José Flávio Motta) nearly half of them were shipped to Brazil. Thus, over 350 years, nearly 5 million slaves landed in Brazil. The British colonies in North America and the United States of America probably imported only around one tenth of this number. By 1850 there were 2.5 million slaves in the country and the 1872 census reported that around 58 per cent of the population were of African descent (whether slaves or free men).”
― Peter Furtado, Histories of Nations: How Their Identities Were Forged

“From the time of the ancient Greeks Iran was known to the Europeans as Persia; in 1935 the Iranian government, prompted by Nazi contacts in Germany, demanded that the rest of the world officially call it Iran, largely to highlight its Aryan origins.”
― Peter Furtado, Histories of Nations: How Their Identities Were Forged

“dominant, oppressive, exploitative, manipulative, occasionally kind and frequently neglectful close relation – a classic example of the Freudian fond abuser.”
― Peter Furtado, Histories of Nations: How Their Identities Were Forged