Hal Langfur

Hal Langfur is a historian of colonial Latin America whose research examines Brazil’s interior, Indigenous peoples, and the limits of imperial authority. Adrift on an Inland Sea carries the subtitle Misinformation and the Limits of Empire in the Brazilian Backlands and was published by Stanford University Press in 2023. The study follows Portuguese efforts between 1750 and Brazilian independence in 1822 to explore inland territories, control mineral wealth, and extend royal power. Langfur focuses on expeditions whose reports were shaped by rumor, disputed claims, incomplete observation, and encounters with people beyond the state’s reach. By treating information itself as a historical problem, he shows how officials could misunderstand the regions they hoped to govern. The book draws on ethnohistory, legal and literary history, and studies of slavery and diaspora. Adrift on an Inland Sea received the Conference on Latin American History’s Warren Dean Memorial Prize, recognition that places it within current scholarship on Brazil, frontiers, knowledge, and empire.