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Ecological Ideas and Historical Construction of the Brazilian Cerrado  

Sandro Dutra e Silva

Brazil’s national territory has traditionally been analyzed in terms of large biogeographical regions. The most current and widely used classification for both planning and environmental conservation purposes in Brazil divides the country into six large biomes: the Amazon, the Caatinga, the Cerrado, the Pantanal, the Atlantic Coast Forest, and the Pampa. All the biomes have faced threats to the preservation of their natural resources from various causes. Despite its rich biodiversity, the Cerrado has historically been affected by these threats, especially by the rapid expansion of the agricultural frontier over the past fifty years. An important issue for the environmental history of the Cerrado and for Brazilian biomes in general is the context of the ecological ideas used to construct the paradigms by which Brazil’s biogeographical formations are defined. This context involves ecological assumptions incorporated over the years that are crucial to understanding the historical construction of the Cerrado and other biomes. The ecological ideas that have historically constituted the Cerrado help to reflect on the historical distribution of phytogeographies, their specific features and the processes by which both human and nonhuman elements of the Brazilian biomes interact. The Cerrado is, therefore, a historical construction, the product of ecological metaphors and environmental paradigms adopted since the 19th century. Since 2004, the demarcations and territorial definitions of the Cerrado have been largely guided by the concept of biomes, which has also guided the country’s environmental policies. Similarly, the cartographic representation of the biomes is also a historical construction that reflects the prioritization of floristic compositions, especially in the distinction between forests and campos (grasslands) in Brazil. Due to its geographic location, the Cerrado shares a border with almost all the biomes, with the exception of the Pampas in the far south of Brazil. In addition to its floristic complexity, the adaptive integration of its fauna and flora, and the ways in which humans have adapted to the environment, the environmental history of the Cerrado offers an important insight into the asymmetries and strategies by which the environment is used and protected in Brazil.

Article

Black Associational Politics in 20th-Century Brazil  

Petrônio Domingues

The population of African descent in Brazil has always maintained vibrant associative communities, whether in the form of mutual aid societies, confraternities, and religious brotherhoods that existed since the time of slavery or in the form of other voluntary associations that appeared later, such as recreational societies, civic centers, literary guilds, musical groups, carnival blocos, and the black press. For Afro-Brazilians, the associative experience throughout the 20th century contributed to a sense of group belonging and a consciousness of a shared identity and experience of racial discrimination. Furthermore, these relationships enabled Afro-Brazilians to begin claiming rights as citizens, protesting against what afflicted them as a community. These joint efforts fueled collective acts of resistance and self-determination that, while evident for centuries, acquired new meanings and manifestations following the abolition of slavery in 1888. Black associations did not limit themselves to denouncing problems or detecting their causes and consequences. They tried to point out ways to overcome them by proposing several solutions: the moral elevation of Afro-Brazilians, which implied a preoccupation with their image in the various sectors where they acted; improving their educational and instructional level; valorizing their race and, by extension, black identity; and emphasizing the need to react to injustices, and even to act politically. However, the main solution was the union of black Brazilians, a sine qua non for this segment of the population to strengthen and thus be able to claim and gain space in society, improve living conditions, and even overcome persistent challenges. Understanding the history of black associative life in Brazil during the 20th century is necessary in order to grasp the struggles and challenges Afro-Brazilians have faced around common interests, particularly since these collective actions are an integral part of the black experience and, in some respects, overlap with it.

Article

The Abolition of Brazilian Slavery, 1864–1888  

Ricardo Salles

Brazil was the last Western country to abolish slavery, which it did in 1888. As a colonial institution, slavery was present in all regions and in almost all free and freed strata of the population. Emancipation only became an issue in the political sphere when it was raised by the imperial government in the second half of the decade of the 1860s, after the defeat of the Confederacy in the US Civil War and during the war against Paraguay. In 1871, new legislation, despite the initial opposition from slave owners and their political representatives, set up a process of gradual emancipation. By the end of the century, slavery would have disappeared, or would have become residual, without major disruptions to the economy or the land property regime. By the end of the 1870s, however, popular opposition to slavery, demanding its immediate abolition without any kind of compensation to former slave owners, grew in parliament and as a mass movement. Abolitionist organizations spread across the country during the first half of the 1880s. Stimulated by the direct actions of some of these abolitionist organizations, resistance to slavery intensified and became increasingly a struggle against slavery itself and not only for individual or collective freedom. Incapable of controlling the situation, the imperial government finally passed a law in parliament granting immediate and unconditional abolition on May 13, 1888.

Article

Child Labor in Brazil and Uruguay  

Marcia Guedes Vieira

The International Labour Organization estimates that there are 12.5 million children and adolescents under the age of fifteen currently working in Latin America and the Caribbean. Of these, 9.6 million (77%) perform tasks that pose a risk to their physical and psychological health. This article presents a brief comparative analysis of child labor in Brazil and Uruguay in order to discuss the challenges of confronting this phenomenon in two very different countries that have embraced divergent strategies to deal with similar problems. To do this, the article presents an overview of the incidence of child labor in Brazil and Uruguay and seeks to demonstrate how far the category of labor is from a universal definition in the academic world, which is also repeated in the debate on the definition of child labor. It is possible to identify different moments of the debate in Latin America regarding the concept of child labor. Some approaches have been more contextualized than others, but all remain controversial and are sometimes considered incomplete. It will also consider the changes in the world of labor and how they interfere in this phenomenon. Despite advances in the fight against child labor overall, Brazil is starting to stagnate in its efforts to reduce the number of child and adolescent workers, and its challenge is to find new political solutions to address this problem. Uruguay still needs to place the issue more centrally on the nation’s political and social agenda in order to guarantee consistent research on the problem that can guide its policy responses.

Article

Brazil on the International Stage  

David Mares

Four elements of Brazil’s identity—its large size, its self-perception as part of the Western world, its vulnerability to European intervention and to the changing world economy, and its success in defending itself through diplomacy—have all contributed to shaping its aspirations in the international domain. Participation in the councils of the great powers became a means by which Brazilian diplomats could pursue a world order that was more favorable to its interests. But even though domestic aspirations and foreign perceptions have held out the prospect for Brazil becoming a major power, it has lacked the capabilities—particularly on the military and economic dimensions—to pursue a traditional path to greatness. Militarily, Brazil has been only episodically consequential, and less so as we approach the present. Given South America’s remoteness from the geopolitical centers of global conflict, Brazil has faced little pressure to improve its modest security capabilities beyond what was necessary to fend off its smaller neighbors. Brazil’s efforts to advance through partnerships with other states have been hobbled by a historical reluctance to pool its sovereignty. In addition, turbulent domestic politics or major economic crises have periodically undermined Brazil’s credibility and capabilities, interrupting its rise. How has Brazil sought to overcome the gap between its ambitions and its capabilities? Brazil was a prominent exponent of the practice of ‘soft power’. It positioned itself internationally as a proponent of equality among nations, international law, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. To this, Brazil has added a formidable cultural output and most recently, democracy, prosperity and social inclusion. This is an attractive package, particularly for other developing countries who want to find a similar status. This chapter follows Brazil’s attempts in the 20th century and up through President Dilma Rousseff to parlay this approach into a say in shaping the rules governing the international order.

Article

World War I and Brazil  

Stefan Rinke

When news broke of the war in Europe, there was talk of a catastrophe that, as a result of the close-knit global entanglements, would embroil the world in an unprecedented crisis. The world dimensions of the events were in evidence to contemporary Latin American observers from early on. Despite the region’s considerable distance from the battlefields, the First World War was felt more than any other previous event outside Latin America in Brazil, and it was clear that its repercussions would affect the lives of average citizens. The relative isolation from which people in the region had witnessed other conflicts in Europe prior to 1914 came to an end. Many Brazilians took an active interest in the war. They participated in the debates about the end of Western hegemony and the downfall of Europe, which took place around the world and would become emblematic of the 20th century. The perception of the war followed a global logic, as Brazil was entangled in the events because of the new type of economic and propaganda war. Modern historiography largely ignored the impact of the war in Brazil, although a number of treatises appeared immediately after the conflict. It was not until the advent of dependence theory that interest was rekindled in the significance of the First World War. The picture changed in 2014 when several important studies integrated new perspectives of cultural and global history. While the First World War may have long been a marginal concern of Brazilian historiography, it was even more common to find “general” histories of the conflagration devoid of any perspective other than the European and that of the United States. But in the total wars of the 20th century, even a neutral country could not remain passive. As a result of its natural resources and strategic position, Brazil was to become an actor in this conflagration.

Article

Independence: Change and Continuity  

João Paulo Pimenta

Stemming from an accelerated and tumultuous process unleashed by European wars in the first decade of the 19th century, Brazil and Portugal split politically in 1822. In a sense, Brazil’s independence reflects a number of peculiar characteristics within the context of the time due, in part, to three centuries of Portuguese colonization and to changes within the colonial system beginning in the second half of the 1700s. In other ways, however, Brazilian independence is linked to external events like the French Revolution, the independence of Haiti, and, above all, the wars of independence in Spanish America. The most profound and lasting consequences of the break with Portugal were the emergence of a Brazilian state and nation that until that point did not exist and that was consolidated over the course of the nineteenth century, as well as the nationalization of certain colonial institutions that were partially maintained. Historiography and national memory would later imbue independence with supreme importance as the foundational moment of the nation such that it has become a recurring theme in historical studies of Brazil.

Article

Whaling in the South Atlantic: Hunting Whales along the Brazilian Coast (1760–1850)  

Wellington Castelucci Junior

From the first half of the 18th century to 1850, whaling ships, coming from different New England ports, hunted whales in the South Atlantic, focusing their attentions on certain areas along the Brazilian coast, the loci of constant seasonal migration by these mammals for procreation. According to data about whaling voyages obtained from the Mystic Sea Port Museum, between 1700 and 1920, 16,379 expeditions left the Northeast of New England. At the heart of this temporal demarcation, between 1761 and 1844, around 650 whaling expeditions were carried out along the Brazilian coast, representing approximately 3.97% of the total excursions of the period. In other words, in 83 years an average of 7.83 expeditions were made each year to various regions of the Brazilian coast, specifically Bahia, Pernambuco, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Santa Catarina. From these areas, a huge amount of two whale species were caught: humpback whales and the southern right whale. In this period, the most desired prey was the sperm whale. However, these did not come close to the coast, so they were rarely killed in Brazilian waters. Whalers thus balanced hunting sperm whales in deep waters with the catching of the other types in Brazilian coastal waters. The results of these incursions were measured by the quantity of oil, extracted from animal fat, bones deposited on the decks of boats, and spermaceti, taken from the cranium of the sperm whale, brought to New England ports. The aim of this article is to trace the trajectory of the North American whaling incursions, from their port of origin to the places of whale hunting on the Brazilian coast. In addition, the text focuses on the typology of vessels, the duration of expeditions, experiences of crews, and the results of voyages, materialized in the production unloaded in U.S. ports.

Article

The Putumayo Atrocities  

Angus Mitchell

The Putumayo atrocities allude to an outrage that made international headlines between 1909 and 1913. The evolving press story drew public attention to the extreme exploitation of people and environment by a British-owned extractive rubber company in a contested region of the northwest/Upper Amazon bordering Peru, Colombia, and Brazil. The scandal contributed to the demise of the “boom” in the extractive rubber industry in the Amazon. Claims of atrocities were brought initially to the attention of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society (ASAPS) in London. Humanitarian pressure triggered a series of official investigations undertaken by the governments of Britain, Peru, the United States, and the Vatican. The British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, dispatched the consul general in Brazil, Roger Casement, to investigate. Casement made two separate journeys into the region in 1910 and 1911. In 1912, a British government Blue Book was published containing his reports and oral testimony gathered from British-Caribbean subjects recruited by the company to act as overseers. This was followed by a parliamentary select committee inquiry held in London that ran from October 1912 to April 1913. The US government organized their own commission of inquiry and published their own report. Despite the acreage of text produced, the efforts to help the rainforest communities proved too little too late. By the time the investigations had been undertaken, and the reports published, the main Indigenous communities living across the territory had been largely worked to death, displaced, or hunted down. In July 1914, an amendment to the Slavery Bill was passed in the British Houses of Parliament requiring transnational companies to assume humane responsibility and care for their workforce in whatever territories they operated. However, as Europe collapsed toward war, the legislation was never enshrined into international law, and this remains one of the unrealized goals of international labor relations to this day. Nevertheless, the Putumayo atrocities endure as the most closely documented and described incidents of the last years of the Amazon rubber boom and allow for consideration of the unfathomable human cost in a particularly vicious moment of untrammeled international colonial capitalism in South America.

Article

Palmares and Zumbi: Quilombo Resistance to Colonial Slavery  

Luiz Geraldo Silva

Existing in the 16th and 17th centuries and located in the captaincy of Pernambuco, in the Northeast of Brazil, the quilombo of Palmares was one of most vigorous and complex societies formed by fugitive slaves in the Americas. Its size, longevity, and the intensity of the war that marked its collapse in 1694 can only be compared to events of a similar nature that took place in Jamaica and Suriname, the Maroon War (1728–1739) and the Saramaka War (1749–1762), respectively. While these were concluded in peace treaties between colonial governments and fugitive slaves, Palmares had a different outcome. Its historic dynamics were associated with three interdependent dimensions. The first refers to the formation and social dimension of both the plantation economy and the traffic of African slaves to Brazil, which explains the nature, social existence, and density of social groups who formed and maintained Palmares quilombo for more than a century. The second dimension is related to the transformations over successive generations of its institutions and balance of power, from which there resulted a political structure based on lineage and the African concept of rights-in-persons. The third dimension is related to the relations of power between the leaders of Palmares and agents of the Portuguese monarchy, who sought to undermine that political structure and to take advantage of the tensions between the lineages existing in the quilombo.

Article

Atlantic Sugar Trade in 17th-century Brazil  

Daniel Strum

During the first half of the 17th century, trade in Brazilian sugar was as a profitable enterprise, despite Maghrebi piracy and imperial rivalry between the Netherlands and the Iberian Crowns. Then, Brazil was the Western Hemisphere’s main producer of sugar, which attracted high prices in Europe. Trade profitability diminished in the second half of the century as competition from the Caribbean dropped prices in Europe while nominal prices in Brazil were fixed. Regulated shipping reduced price gaps further and increased transaction costs. Finally, French and English mercantilist policies closed their markets to Brazilian sugar, and credit grew increasingly risky in Brazil. To make this trade feasible and profitable, merchants developed of a wide range of maritime transportation strategies, risk mitigation methods, and payment and credit practices. The organization of shipping sought to make the most of the supply and demand along the route and reduce transportation costs with idle cargo space. By mixing more expensive goods along with cheaper products, merchants tried to keep many vessels sailing between those ports to increase the flow of information, to profit from arbitrage, and to spread the risk. Being a semi-luxury item, the value sugar in absolute terms afforded insurance premiums more than the products with lower value per volume traditionally traded by the Dutch. Yet the value of sugar was not as high as Asian spices or Spanish American bullion, therefore, the costs of concentrating shipping in convoys protected by well-armed vessels was burdensome to the sugar trade. Attempts to coerce sailing in convoys and establish monopolies on certain exports (and imports) to Brazil by the Dutch and the Portuguese found fierce opposition among most traders, particularly modest ones. Being quite fungible, easily priced, and widely traded, sugar roughly fit the modern concept of a commodity. As such, it was convenient means of payment and also functioned as commodity money in Brazil, where it was the main merchandise sourced in the colony. As planters grew increasingly indebted, they secured various legal hindrances to their properties’ foreclosure and compulsory acceptance of sugar as payment at officially tariffed prices unless otherwise stipulated, which increased merchants’ credit risk while reducing their gains.

Article

Digital Resources: The H-LatAm Listserv  

John Schwaller

H-LatAm, short for History-Latin America, is an electronic list that has served the scholarly community since the late 20th century as a forum in which important issues facing Latin American history can be debated. It has served as a means of spreading information about publications, a channel for soliciting research and research collaborations, and an instrument that links historians of Latin America who are spread throughout the world. A review of this resource allows for a look at the history of Latin American studies on the Internet—useful for understanding and researching early threads—and some of the specific contributions of H-LatAm to the profession.

Article

Pre-Columbian Earth Builders of the Amazon  

Jonas Gregorio de Souza

Continuing advances in the archaeology of the Amazon have changed long-standing misconceptions about the rainforest as a homogeneous, nearly pristine environment occupied by small, scattered groups. Massive archaeological sites, deep deposits of anthropogenic soils, and earthworks found over thousands of kilometers now testify to the scale and intensity of past human impact in some parts of the Amazon. However, debate persists about the extent of such transformations, as distinct environments within the Amazon Basin (floodplains, savannas, seasonal forests) reveal different scales and intensities of pre-Columbian landscape modification. In that context, the discovery of hundreds of geometric earthen enclosures in the southern rim of the Amazon is proving that some areas that were previously considered virtually untouched forest may have been densely settled in the past. Although regional variations exist, most southern Amazonian enclosures appear to be defensive earthworks built at the turn of the second millennium ce, a period recognized by archaeologists as one of escalating population densities, migrations, and warfare across the Amazon Basin.

Article

The Discovery of Gold Mines in Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, and Goiás  

Adriana Romeiro

After more than a century and a half of looking for precious metals, by private individuals and the Portuguese crown, gold in abundant quantities was finally discovered in 1695, in the sertões of Cataguases—a region that corresponds to the central portion of the current state of Minas Gerais. The event marked the beginning of a series of finds in the most western part of Portuguese America in the first half of the 18th century, in the regions that would come to be known as Minas do Cuyabá and Minas dos Goyazes. The 18th century marked the dawn of a golden era in the Luso-Brazilian world, pointing to the concretization of the promises that, since the 16th century, had proclaimed an era of wealth for Portugal. The most profound consequence of the discovery of gold was a new geopolitical reconfiguration of Portuguese dominions in the American continent, in a politically delicate conjuncture, in which America came to occupy a central position in the Portuguese Empire, at the same time that Iberian territorial boundaries—established by the Treaty of Tordesillas—were the subject of intense negotiation. The captaincy of Minas Gerais, where a large amount of gold was discovered for the first time, constituted a laboratory where the Portuguese crown drafted the political and administrative formula that would later be applied in the captaincies of Mato Grosso and Goiás.

Article

Traders in Colonial Brazil: Origins, Strategies, and Networks  

George Felix Cabral de Souza

Mercantile groups of colonial Brazil have drawn renewed attention in recent decades as analyses of empirical data have outlined a more complex economic scenario for the Portuguese colonies in Brazil, bringing into sharper focus the range of activities undertaken by businessmen who established themselves in the conquered lands. Acting individually or through large mercantile networks, they were on the front lines of efforts to expand and maintain the colonized areas, as well providing links between the Old and New Worlds, including by trafficking in enslaved Africans. The 18th-century gold boom had a tremendous impact on colonial markets and brought both economic and social consequences for merchants. Although the model of social hierarchization continued to be set by the agrarian elite, large merchants’ access to liquidity, credit mechanisms, and reinvestment opportunities gave them ever greater political weight in the empire’s balance of power. Most merchants in colonial Brazil were natives of Portugal and had to overcome prejudices and resistance to integrate themselves into society. Commercial success was only the first step in a long path that relied on political and family strategies. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, merchants in colonial towns from the north to the south of Brazil had some features in common: they sought symbols of social distinction, they formed and carefully tended networks of family and clients, and they participated in local governance.

Article

Consumerism and Advertising in 20th-Century Brazil  

Maria Claudia Bonadio

In the early 20th century, due to the immigration of thousands of people from the countryside to urban centers, the large city became a symbol of modernity for many reasons, among them because it was where the shop windows, the lights in storefronts, posters on walls or trams, and billboards were concentrated. In the city, there was also greater access to the illustrated magazines that had started to circulate. Alongside city culture, the culture of advertising also emerged, changing the visual landscape. Advertising also echoed in the neighborhoods, with the voices of peddlers selling products at doorsteps. Propaganda, therefore, went through a modernization process, although old ways of advertising and selling continued. Consumption was also divided between the old and the new, since the opportunity to make purchases in glass-fronted department stores discouraged people from buying food products from street vendors who circulated around the neighborhoods. In the early years of the 20th century, the new visuality of advertising, which brought an air of modernity, was still at an amateur stage in Brazil or originated abroad. This scenario began to change at the beginning of the 20th century when the first advertising agency began to operate in Brazil (between 1913 and 1914). In the 1950s, the first Advertising College was created in the country to enhance the study and development of the field. Brazilian advertising would peak in the last three decades of the 20th century, when Brazilian advertisements, especially those produced for television, gained international prestige due to the many awards they received at international festivals. During the 1990s, some Brazilian publicists would become famous personalities, known throughout the country. The demand for higher education in the area began to grow. Consumption in Brazil, however, suffered ups and downs due to various economic crises (and a few periods of growth), which possibly pushed Brazilian advertising to invest in creativity. On the other hand, forms of consumption went through major transformations in the form of new media and forms of commerce. Although the door-to-door sale of some types of food continued, the largest volume of purchases during the second half of the century occurred in large stores, malls, or hypermarkets, where you can find all sorts of products. From vegetables sold at the doorstep to washed, cut, and ready for consumption commercialized vegetables; from meat preserved in lard to canned sausage; from clothes made by dressmakers or seamstresses, to ready-made clothes; from fashion deriving from Hollywood cinema to fashion inspired by telenovelas; from radio or television shared by the family in the living room, to the subdivision of consumption via miniaturization and individualization of goods (phonograph and personal TV, Walkman, and portable CD player), from the dial-up phone that served all residents of the household to the cellphone—these are some of the most important changes in consumption over the 20th century.

Article

Brazilian Universities and Politics in the 20th Century  

Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta

Recently Brazil reached the mark of eight million university students, which represents around 4 percent of the population. Although this level is less than those in developed countries, it signifies an advance in relation to the country’s starting point. Unlike Spain, the Portuguese Empire did not create university institutions in its colonies. Following the Independence of Brazil in 1822, the new governing elite established some higher-level courses (initially medicine, law, and engineering), but these functioned in isolation, in other words, university institutions were not created. The first universities emerged only in the 1920s and were regulated during the Getúlio Vargas administration (1931). Since then, higher-level education has been the object of greater public attention—as well as political conflicts—due to both its role in development projects and its capacity to produce leaders. Between the 1940s and 1960s, university students became a relevant political force, having engaged in debates for university reform and also in favor of social changes, contributing to the process of political radicalization abruptly ended by the 1964 military coup. The dictatorship led by the military implemented an authoritarian modernization of the universities, repressing and purging the “undesirables” at the same time that it increased investment in research and graduate studies. The results were paradoxical, since although the dictatorship created a better structured university system, it was a more authoritarian and socially elitist one. The first post-dictatorial governments maintained the university structure inherited from the previous period, but they deteriorated due to a lack of public resources caused by hyperinflation and also by the intention of reducing public expenditure on higher education. The country managed to improve its higher-level institutions during the 20th century, which became strategic spaces for political battles and, for this reason, targets of constant state intervention. Despite the reforms and the expansion, universities were marked by elitism and social inequality, like Brazilian society itself, problems that only recently have started to be addressed. Only in the 21st century did Brazilian universities undergo a new expansionist phase, led by the center-left Brazilian governments which, in addition to expanding the public system, also invested in the inclusion of social sectors that previously had no access to higher education. It appears that this process may be interrupted, thanks to the “right turn” experienced by Brazil since 2016–2018.

Article

Coffee and the Formation of Modern Brazil, 1860–1914  

Rafael de Bivar Marquese

The coffee economy was decisive for the construction of independent Brazil. By the middle of the 19th century, the country was responsible for about half of the coffee global supply; in 1900, that number had increased to about three-quarters of the world’s production. In the Brazilian monarchical period (1822–1889) the center of the activity was located in the valley of the Paraiba do Sul river. Brazilian coffee production from its very beginnings demonstrated an inherent spatial mobility and a great demand for workers. Before 1850, labor supply was guaranteed by the transatlantic slave trade; after that, by an internal slave trade. The two basic characteristics of the coffee economy created during the era of slavery (the intensive exploitation of workers through the extensive exploitation of natural resources) were maintained after the crisis and the abolition of the institution (1888), when the center of the coffee economy moved to the West of São Paulo. Now counting on a new arrangement of free labor (the colonato) and on the subsidized immigration of European peasants, the São Paulo coffee economy in the new republican regime (founded in 1889) underwent a huge productive leap. Overproduction and falling prices became the new problem. The coffee valorization policy adopted by the State of São Paulo after 1906 and then the federal government indicates the reconfiguration of the class relations experienced in the new republican era, which nevertheless kept many of the historical structures of the slave legacy intact.

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Enslaved and Free Workers and the Growth of the Working Class in Brazil  

Henrique Espada Lima

Since the early successful colonial enterprises in Brazil’s territory, men and women forcibly transferred from Africa were used as enslaved workers not only on plantations and other agricultural settings, but also in protoindustrial contexts, such as in the sugar mills and the mining trade and metallurgy. Enslaved people were also a fundamental part of the labor force in the urban artisanry, manufacturing, and the early industrial ventures in the 18th century and after Independence in 1822. In the second half of the 19th century, the first drive of industrialization, in places like Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and São Paulo, was driven by British investments led by slave-owning entrepreneurs and powered by the intensive use of enslaved labor. Foreign workers brought to the country, Brazilian free manual laborers and other poor immigrants, freed, and enslaved people often worked side by side in shipyards, gunpowder factories, mining endeavors, railways constructions, and many other activities. In Brazil, especially in urban contexts, many enslaved men and women would rent themselves out, or they would be leased out by their masters, to perform a variety of urban activities, including working in the country’s many artisan shops and industries. In doing so, not only were they able to get financial compensation for their work by becoming ganhadores (enslaved wage earners), but, in that capacity, they also experienced situations usually associated with “free” laborers, such as wage negotiation, bargaining, and even strikes. Some of the enslaved ganhadores were able to buy their own freedom and carried their experiences into their lives as free workers. Therefore, both free and unfree laborers of African descent were present in a variety of trades and enterprises, and the multiplicity of their experiences shaped the dynamics of labor relations, identity building, political and labor cultures, and individual and collective action and organization in the long history of the making of Brazilian working classes. The heterogeneity that defined the Brazilian laboring classes, composed of people of African descent as well as poor White Portuguese settlers and other immigrants, united and divided by race, gender, nationality, legal status, histories, and cultural backgrounds cannot be stressed enough. It is crucial to understand how the institution of slavery impacted the social and economic relations of all workers, free and unfree, in Brazil even after slavery was abolished in 1888: its legacy of oppression, but also diversity, is expressed in the conflicts and collaborations that marked workers’ collective experience and impacted the transformations that the working classes underwent in post-emancipation Brazil.

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Digital Resources: Intellectuals in Brazil  

Eliana Regina de Freitas Dutra and Renato Pinto Venancio

The en masse digitalization of sets of documents held by memory institutions in Brazil and the promotion of remote access to them has impacted the writing and the reinterpretation of Brazilian history and historiography in different dominions. In Brazil, at the national and regional levels, there are numerous academies, libraries, foundations, museums, institutions, and centers of documentation which preserve and are progressively making various—and often meaningful—collections available online to scholars and researchers in the area of intellectual history. Taking into account the quantity and diversity of these collections, already available on the Internet, and the impossibility of elaborating an exhaustive inventory, it was decided to present a sample of institutions of diverse natures which hold expressive sets of collections with online access, whether in their totality or significant parts of them. This option was complemented by the no less important listing of the collection of a foreign university library, as well as the listing of various other digital addresses considered useful for the knowledge of researchers. It is also worth mentioning that the selected sites not only contain significant digitalized sets of documents but also allow free and unrestricted access, through online research instruments.