Attributing civilizing features to the freedpersons who returned to Africa from Brazil and viewing the returnees as bearers of progressive ideas was very common in nineteenth-century travel literature. This perspective had an influence on those who used this type of source and can also be found in records of the words of the descendants of returnees. The image formed of returnee communities set them apart from their ancestors and from the Africans who had not experienced the diaspora, and was echoed in the political support for the groups emerging from the back-to-Africa process.  
Also of note among these early works on the subject is Antonio Olinto's text, which differs from the previous examples as it takes the form of an investigation based on personal experience in the field, with the character of a formal academic study (Olinto, 1964). In addition to being the author of this work, Olinto was a representative of the Brazilian Government in Nigeria. The contacts he had allowed a Brazilian returnee, who had travelled to Lagos with her African family in one of the last great return shipments, to make a return trip to visit Brazil. The arrival of Dona Romana da Conceição in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1963 was marked by celebration and a ceremony, and her activities in the country led to a bid for closer links between Brazil and Africa - a desire that characterized relations between the two regions in the late 1950s and early 1960s. ${ }^{4}$