Handelmann, Gottfried Heinrich (1827–1891)

Gottfried Heinrich Handelmann (b. 9 August 1827; d. 26 April 1891), German historian of Hispaniola and Brazil. Son of a prosperous saddle maker of Altona, Hamburg, Handelmann studied history at the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin, Göttingen, and Kiel under some distinguished scholars, including Leopold von Ranke. As a student in Kiel, Handelmann was active in the German population's struggle against Danish authority in Schleswig-Holstein. In 1854 the University of Kiel accepted his doctoral dissertation on relations between the German Hanseatic League and the Scandinavian powers. In 1866, after Schleswig-Holstein's incorporation into Prussia, Handelmann was named curator of Schleswig-Holstein antiquities and professor of history at the University of Kiel, positions he held until his death.

Concerned by the rising tide of German immigration to the Western Hemisphere, Handelmann in the 1850s turned to the study of the history of colonization in the Americas. In short order he produced Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten (History of the United States, 1856), Geschichte der insel Hayti (History of the Island of Hispaniola, 1856), and Geschichte von Brasilien (History of Brazil, 1860). The last is by far the most important and, with nearly a thousand pages, longer than the other two combined. The first history of Brazil by an academically trained historian, it takes a regional approach to the colonization of Portuguese America and lacks a unifying theme. The final section of the book, dealing with the 1808–1844 period, is most useful for its coverage of Brazilian immigration policy, which is compared unfavorably with that of the United States.

See alsoBrazil: The Colonial Era, 1500–1808; Brazil: 1808–1889.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Hyslop, "Heinrich Handelmann and Brazilian History," in Teaching Latin American History, edited by E. Bradford Burns et al. (1977), pp. 40-50.

                                        Neill Macaulay