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Week 1 - The historical making and the global positioning of the Brazilian nation
Lecture 1 - The making of the Brazilian nation: history, modernity, and globalization
Key Historical Episodes
Brasil Colonia
• Original populations for at least 10.000 years
• Coastal occupation, plantations (Portuguese, Dutch, French)
• Land grants
• Inland expeditions and support economy (cattle, food, mining)
• Slavery (one of the biggest)
o Slave labour-based exportation colony
• ‘Genocidal displacement’ of indigenous societies
• Political control of the crown
Key figures in Brazilian history
• Pedro II (1842-1889)
o Last emperor
• Getúlio Vargas (1930-1954)
o Committed suicide
o Credited for bringing poor into politics
o Modernisation
• Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979)
o General
o Most prominent during miliary regime
o Initiated return to democracy
• Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010, 2023-)
o Hope to lead to Brazilian reconstruction
o Greater than Vargas?
Four key periods
1822 - Independence
• 1808: Dom Joao VI in Rio
• 1815: Brazil became an ‘equal’ kingdom
• 1820-21: the dilemma of Joao VI
• 1820: Portuguese Cortes wants recolonization
• 1821: Joao returns to Portugal; his son Pedro becomes regent
• 7 September 1822: “fico!” - I Stay! On the banks of the Ipiranga river
• Pedro I (1822-1831)
o Pressured by the elite to declare the independence
o Did not lead long, people thought he was listening to his father
• Regional rebellions and national unity (1830-1845)
• Pedro II (1841-1889)
o Independence and nationhood
▪ Considered to be stable period
▪ Gradual and peaceful dynamic transfer of power - sovereignty recognized
(Britain and Portugal)
▪ Territorial integrity (despite regional rebellions until 1845)
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▪ Monarchy: centralised state and elite ‘circulation’. Barons and coronels
(Pang, Noblemen of the Southern Cross) as an ‘elite imagined community’
▪ Colonial economy, society, slavery
▪ First efforts to promote immigration from Europe (Lesser 2013)
1888 - Abolicao: the abolition of slavery | 1889 – Founding of the modern federation
• Laws against the slave trade (1831, 1850): pra inglês ver
• Socio-economic changes and immigration (from Europe) of free labour
• Abolitionist movement (Joaquim Nabuco)
• 1871: “free womb law”
• 1888: Lei Aurea
• 1889: Founding of the republic: the modern federation
o New coffee elite of Sao Paulo
o The military and positivism
o 15 November 1889 - Military coup
o Abolition of Slavery and the founding of the republic was an interconnected but
separate process. The monarchy was outdated, US was used as a reference, it
was an obsolete form of governance.
o Brazil turned into an elite republic, had formal presidents (old republic). The
rise of Sao Paulo was important as political region for the economy and
industry.
• Blacks after Abolition: racism, discrimination, ‘segunda escravidao’
o Abolition, Republic, Modernity
▪ Abolition (and mass immigration): modernity in the consolidation of
capitalism
▪ Republic: modernity in a liberal and decentral legal state
▪ Social and cultural elitist and racist modernity
1930 - Vargas and national-populism
• The crisis of the old republic was economic and political
• Getulio Vargas was elite member in Rio Grance do Sul and governor of this agricultural
state in the South.
• Elections 1930 lost by Vargas, but he and his backers alleged fraud and corruption
o He used the military to put himself in power
• The Vargas period has been very defining with regard contemporary ideas about how
Brazil should be.
1964 - Military dictatorship
• Coup as ‘revolution’
• Democratic institutions and elections neutralised but not totally abolished
• State-led developmentalism and middle-class consumerism
• 24 years of military rule
o Violent repression (1968-1979)
o Regime-led transition to democracy (1979-1985)
o Tutelage of a ‘political army’ (1985-1990-?)
• Memory politics from Dilma to Bolsonaro
o Dilma herself joined a guerrilla group to fight against the military regime. She
was captured and tortured.
o Bolsonaro referred to this period as nostalgic and supported the military party
Significance of these historical episodes for understanding Brazil today
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o Independence: sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity nationhood
o Abolition: peripheral capitalist relations of production; racial inequality and the
myth of ‘racial democracy
o Republic: federal polity, electorialism, regionalism, modernity
o Vargas: Urban-industrial development, social classes, inequality versus social
justice, bureaucratic state, political militarism, populism (political interpellation
of the urban masses), nationalism, mass national identity (social and racial
‘harmony’)
o Miliary dictatorship: conservative state capitalism, middle class consumerism,
mass media society, state violence, regional power aspirations, legacy for
‘Bolsonarismo’
• Schulze & Fischer 2019
o Brazil as a mirror to the world: blended racialisation and cultural encounters,
peripheral capitalism, alternative geopolitics
o Global processes shape Brazilian nationhood, social relations, and ideas:
‘micro-history of globalisation’ (coffee, race, Cold War, Amazon)
o P. 418: “in-betweenness”
Modern Brazilian nationhood
National identity? Cultural construction
• Not: sameness & homogeneity
• Not: fixed shared essence of a population of a nation-state
• But: a modern political community - the ‘nation’ endowed with cultural meaning that
shaped and reshapes recognition and belonging
• Nation as a ‘register’ of shared cultural fields and practises, as much about unity as
about division, exclusion, conflict (critique of Anderson)
• National identity and modernity: what makes Brazil Brazil? (book)
o Tries to combine sociology and anthropology
o To understand modernity of Brazil you need to understand Brazil’s structure
o Describes a Brazil that ended in 1970
Brazilian nationality & modernity
• 19th century: Elite modernity between mimesis of Europe and racial pessimism
• 1920s: Modernist avant-garde and manifesto antropofágico > 1960s counterculture
Tropicalia movement
• The relational nation: “house, street, otherworld” Roberto DaMatta
• Statist modernity and popular unity: urban-industrial progress and the mestico nation
(1930-1990)
• After 1990: the modernity of diversity, inclusion, citizenship, globalisation
• Bolsonaro and racist conservatism: modernity in reverse?
Imagining modern Brazil
• Cultural fields of Brazilian nationhood
o History and territory
o “Natural abundance” and resource wealth (week 5)
o Vibrant and violent cities (week 4)
o Language - educational system - city and countryside
