Review of the book "The kidnapping of independence: a history of the construction of the myth of Sete de Setembro", by Carlos Lima Junior, Lilia Schwarcz and Lúcia K. Stumpf

Abstract

The kidnapping of independence: a history of the construction of the myth of Sete de Setembro, is the second work of the trio of researchers – historian Carlos Lima Jr. and the anthropologists Lilia Schwarcz and Lúcia Stumpf - who once again get together to produce an essay whose object is constructed from a painting by the Brazilian painter Pedro Américo (1843-1905). In his first endeavor, he devoted himself to the ambivalence, between fiction and non-fiction, of the canvas A Batalha do Avaí, the enormous painting in which Américo portrayed a remarkable episode of the Paraguayan war. The result of this work was published in 2013 by Sextante, under the homonym title of the aforementioned painting by the painter from Paraíba.