Terms of Exchange is about Brazilian and French intellectuals and the dialogues between them that were foundational to the emergence of the modern social sciences. The book examines the interactions and exchanges that French social scientists had with Brazilians such as the modernist Mário de Andrade, historian Caio Prado Júnior, cultural theorist Gilberto Freyre, and sociologist Florestan Fernandes. As I show, these exchanges, although unequal, were invaluable for social and historical thought in the twentieth century, well beyond Brazil.The historian Fernand Braudel once said, “It was in Brazil that I became intelligent.” This book shows why this was the case for him and several others whose work would become influential, including the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and his structuralist method; sociologist Roger Bastide and his approach to the study of the African diaspora, and geographer Pierre Monbeig’s work on settler colonialism and capitalism in the global periphery. It was in Brazil that these Frenchmen held their first university positions at the recently founded University of São Paulo (1934). Their exchanges with Brazilians in and outside of the classroom, I argue, allowed for the development of their thinking, the cultivation of intellectual networks, and ultimately the construction of social-scientific institutions in France. These include the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, the Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, and the Institut des hautes études de l'Amérique latine.Brazilian scholars have long been interested in the story of the University of São Paulo and its French professors, especially since many of Brazil’s first professionally trained social scientists were trained by the French. But few have truly considered just how significant this Brazilian experience and network was in a global perspective. By using a wide array of archives and considering a broad range of intellectuals, Terms of Exchange shows just how important Brazil and Brazilians were in the history of the social sciences and global intellectual history more broadly.I’ve written the book in an accessible—and, I’ve been told, an enjoyable—way. My hope, therefore, is that readers proceed from start to finish. Then again, different chapters might be read as stand-alone pieces, especially when used in the classroom. The first two chapters offer a cultural and intellectual history of São Paulo in the 1920s and 1930s. The third and fourth chapters, in which ideas such as structuralism and the longue durée are developed, could be useful when discussing methodology. The final chapters fully develop the argument about the flow of ideas and practices from Brazil to France, unsettling commonly-held notions about the directionality of influence.