Since the beginning of the colonial period, slavery was an important factor in the constitution of international relations between the Portuguese Empire and the other empires and states in the Atlantic world. In the 15th century, Portuguese merchants sold enslaved Africans from West Africa, initially to Europe and afterwards to the Americas, opening commercial and diplomatic relations that lasted for centuries and would be responsible for the establishment of the largest commercial venture in the Atlantic world in the early modern period. With the independence of Brazil, slavery—and the debate about the prohibition of the Atlantic trade of enslaved Africans—came to be the central element in negotiations of diplomatic relations between the country and other nations, notably Great Britain and the republics of the La Plata River region. Indeed, slavery remained a core issue at least until the end of the Paraguayan War in 1870, when growing international isolation, resulting from the ongoing presence of slavery in Brazil, opened the final crisis of the empire.
Article
Slavery and International Relations in 19th-Century Brazil
Keila Grinberg
Article
The “Arid Sertões” and the Climate Issue in the 19th-Century Brazilian Empire
Gabriel Pereira de Oliveira
Brazil is the fifth-largest country on the planet, and about 90 percent of its territory is located within the tropics. This makes Brazil the largest tropical country and the most biodiverse on Earth. Especially since its process of state building in the 19th century, the image of the Brazilian nation has been intensely associated with the ideal of an exuberant and sumptuous nature, a land of fertility and abundance, like the Amazon rainforest. However, within this gigantic and diverse territory, there were many areas that differed from that nation ideal, like the semi-arid zone located mainly in the countryside of the region that from the middle of the 20th century became known as the Brazilian Northeast. Integrating this semi-arid zone - that is considered the largest tropical dry forest in South America - into the nation project headed by the Imperial Court in Rio de Janeiro was an important challenge in the construction of Brazil in the 19th century.
The climate issue was a decisive key to guiding this process. Although the famous drought in 1877 still frequently appears as the starting point for the importance of the political debate on the semi-arid climate in Brazil, the relations between climate and power in this territory were made earlier. Since the beginnings of the Brazilian Empire in the 1820s, for example, policies to deal with these climatic phenomena were decisive to articulate the power between local elites and the empire. These policies were transformed from occasional succors like groceries especially to water reservoirs after the 1840s. Handling the rainless climate would be crucial to uphold the imperial order in that semi-arid territory. The empire sought to have control not only over the people but also over the weather. However, this relationship between the empire and the “arid hinterland” took shape within the political and environmental Brazilian puzzle at that time, rather than a mere imposition from the court.
Article
Cultural Institutions of the Brazilian Empire
Lilia Katri Moritz Schwarcz
This article provides a larger panorama of the cultural politics of the Brazilian Empire during the 19th century and following the long Second Reign of Pedro II. The central figure of the emperor—as a kind of animator of cultural, scientific, and artistic life—and the conservative profile of the national movement are key issues. The article analyzes the development of the main professional schools of the country, which taught medicine (in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador) and law (in São Paulo and Recife), and also tells the story of the Historical and Geographical Institute and the origins of the museums of art in Rio de Janeiro, the former capital of the court, and scientific museums in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Belém.
Article
The Farrapos War (Rio Grande do Sul, 1835–1845)
Gabriel Aladrén
The Farrapos War was the longest provincial revolt faced by the Brazilian Empire. It originated with a dispute between two factions of regional elites vying for sources of power and wealth in a context marked by economic stagnation, institutional changes wrought by the Regency governments, and the geopolitical reconfiguration of the Rio de la Plata region. The rebels, known as farroupilhas or farrapos, overthrew the government of Rio Grande do Sul and established an independent republic.
The main farrapo leaders were military officers and estancieiros, the owners of large estates, enslaved people, and cattle in the region that bordered Uruguay and Argentina. Their goal was to achieve autonomy in order to distribute political offices, control the borders, and change the fiscal and commercial policy of the empire. Their opponents, known as legalists, were drawn mostly from sectors related to maritime trade, the production of charque (dried and salted beef), and the urban military and administrative bureaucracy. The soldiers of both sides were recruited among the lower classes. They were cowboys and peasants. The farrapos also organized a sizable army of enslaved people who had been confiscated from their opponents and who performed military service in exchange for their freedom.
The Republic of Rio Grande do Sul experienced a sharp decline beginning in 1842. The Battle of Porongos in November 1844 was the last major engagement of the war and resulted in the massacre of Black soldiers from the farroupilha forces. The campaign to bring the province back under government control, led by the Baron of Caxias, was carried out through the granting of amnesties, the payment of debts, and the incorporation of farroupilha officers into the Imperial Army. With the end of the Farrapos War, the Brazilian Empire ensured its internal consolidation and returned to an assertive foreign policy in the Río de la Plata region.
Article
The Sabinada Rebellion
Monica Duarte Dantas and Roberto Saba
The Sabinada took place between November 1837 and March 1838 in the city of Salvador, province of Bahia, Empire of Brazil. It was a separatist rebellion organized by men of federalist and republican ideals who opposed the conservative turn of the Regency government, which ruled Brazil from the abdication of Dom Pedro I until 1840, when Dom Pedro II—three and a half years before the legal age of 18—was crowned Emperor. The Sabinada, however, was more than a separatist movement organized by a rogue political group. It brought together a myriad of social tensions that had been brewing in Salvador since colonial times.
Members of the military, who had seen their standing in Brazilian society rapidly deteriorate since the war of independence, found in the Sabinada an opportunity to reclaim a leading position. Middling sectors of Salvador’s society joined in, with hopes that the movement would give them some voice in a political system otherwise dominated by wealthy planters and merchants. The free poor nurtured similar political hopes and, more importantly, rebelled against a highly unequal economic system that left them in dire straits, facing the constant threat of homelessness and starvation. The slaves did not hesitate to jump into the fray, running away from their masters to join the rebel forces and forcing its leaders to break their initial promise that slavery would not be jeopardized. People of color—slave and free—embraced the Sabinada to exterminate some blatant racial inequality existing in 19th-century Bahia. Brazilians of all colors and social ranks took advantage of the situation to carry out vengeance against foreign nationals, especially the Portuguese, who controlled retail commerce in Salvador.
Rebel leaders had to deal with all these different demands at once, and they did so with much improvisation and unexpected turns. Simultaneously, they had to fend off a brutal repression from loyalist authorities and combatants. When the Sabinada exploded, the powerful and rich fled Salvador to Bahia’s sugar-producing region, known as the Recôncavo. There, they received reinforcements from the National Guard and Army battalions from other provinces. Salvador was under siege for most of the rebellion. The rebels had a hard time acquiring the necessary means to wage war and nearly starved to death. When the loyalists finally attacked, they made sure to shed as much rebel blood as possible to make an example. The loyalists killed indiscriminately, burned buildings, suspended civil rights, executed prisoners, and deported rebels. Through this bloodbath, they succeeded in reestablishing the unequal political and social order that had existed in Salvador before.
Article
The Paraguayan War and Brazilian National Identity
Wilma Peres Costa
The effort of searching the effects of the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay on the building up of Brazilian national identity challenges the historian with a paradox: why the military victory promotes the fall of the political regime instead of strengthening it. The article tries to deal with some dimensions of this paradox underlining the distinctive characteristics of this war in the ongoing warmongering in the Platine region—the huge numbers of conscripted soldiers (“the Total War”), the hybrid political character of the alliance (Brazilian monarchy and Argentinian Republic), the opposition of most of the conservative classes, and the unveiling of slavery as a strategic weakness for the country—are some of the themes treated in order to explain how the empire lost both the battle of worldwide moral support and the battle of legitimacy inside the country. The massive recruitment coming from all parts of the country could bring the empowerment of ordinary people in the postwar decades, but the monarchical elites took careful steps to ensure that these sectors were quickly demobilized and also not to receive medals and other military honors. The postwar era was one of unfolding of an endemic crisis leading to contest of monarchical institutions. They came from military sectors, but also from regional elites, besides bitter criticism from middle-class intellectuals. Racial arguments filled an outstanding part in this period, leading to the giving prestige of “scientific” racism and the negative diagnosis for the future of a modern nation founded in a racially mixed society.
