Contrary to what nationalist histories have long professed, nations are neither determined by nature nor by the ethnic composition of their peoples. Nations are imagined communities, and every nationality is founded on premises that include some and exclude others based on debatable criteria. That truth is made evident in the depictions of Brazil by Germanic artists and writers in the 19th century. In their encounter with places and ways of life completely different from their own, travelers from various cultures and countries, different from each other and shaped by centuries of conflict, began to realize how much they had in common. For the immigrants who came to stay, life in Brazil meant forging new identities, even if only to cling to a nostalgia for what they had left behind.

The worldwide circulation of books, prints, panoramas, albums of views and vistas established the contrast between a supposedly civilized Europe and the presumed exoticism of the rest of the world. A social imaginary of tropical nature, wild, and untamed, came to be opposed to ideas of domesticity and civility as emblems of cultural belonging.