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History of Brazil (1889-1930)
Encyclopedia
The period of Brazilian history from 1889 to 1930 is commonly called the República Velha (ʁeˈpublikɐ ˈvɛʎɐ, Old Republic). The República Velha ended in 1930 with a military coup that installed a dictator.
deposed Emperor
Dom Pedro II, declared Brazil
a republic
, and reorganized the government.
From 1889 to 1930, the government was a constitution
al democracy
, but democracy was nominal.
In reality, the elections were rigged, voters in rural areas were pressured or induce to vote for the chosen candidates of their bosses (see coronelismo
) and, if all those methods did not work, the election results could still be changed by one sided decisions of Congress's verification of powers commission (election authorities in the República Velha were not independent from the executive and the Legislature, dominated by the ruling oligarchs). This system resulted in the presidency of Brazil alternating between the oligarchies of the dominant states of São Paulo
and Minas Gerais
. This regime is often referred to as "Café com Leite", 'coffee with milk', after the respective agricultural products of the two states.
This period ended with a military coup that placed Getúlio Vargas
, a civilian, in the presidency; Vargas remained as dictator
until 1945.
The Brazilian republic was not an ideological offspring of the republics born of the French
or American revolution
s, although the Brazilian regime would attempt to associate itself with both. The republic did not have enough popular support to risk open elections. It was a regime born of a coup d'état that maintained itself by force. The republicans made Deodoro president (1889–91) and, after a financial crisis, appointed Field Marshal Floriano Vieira Peixoto
Minister of War to ensure the allegiance of the military.
in ending the Empire had made an oath to uphold it. The officer corps would eventually resolve the contradiction by linking its duty to Brazil itself, rather than to transitory governments. The Republic was born rather accidentally: Deodoro had intended only to replace the cabinet, but the republicans manipulated him into founding a republic.
The history of the old Republic was dominated by a quest for a viable form of government to replace the monarchy
. This quest lurched back and forth between state autonomy and centralization. The constitution of 1891, establishing the Republic of the United States of Brazil (República dos Estados Unidos do Brasil), granted extensive autonomy to the provinces, now called States. The Federal system was adopted, and all powers not granted in the Constitution to the Federal Government belonged to the States. It recognized that the central government did not rule at the local level. The Empire of Brazil had not absorbed fully the regional pátrias, and now they reasserted themselves.
Into the 1920s, the federal government in Rio de Janeiro
was dominated and managed by a combination of the more powerful states of São Paulo
and Minas Gerais
and to a lesser extent Pernambuco
, Rio Grande do Sul
and Bahia
.
As a result, the history of the republic is also the story of the development of the army as a national institution. The elimination of the monarchy had reduced the number of national institutions to one, the army. Although the Roman Catholic Church
continued its presence throughout the country, it was not national but rather international in its personnel, doctrine, liturgy, and purposes. The army assumed this new position almost haphazardly, filling part of the vacuum left by the collapse of the monarchy and gradually acquiring a doctrine and vision to support its de facto role. Although it had more units and men in Rio de Janeiro
and Rio Grande do Sul
than elsewhere, its presence was felt throughout the country. Its personnel, its interests, its ideology, and its commitments were national in scope.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the United States
, much of Europe
, and neighboring Argentina
expanded the right to vote. Brazil, however, moved to restrict access to the polls. In 1874, in a population of about 10 million, the franchise was held by about one million, but in 1881 this had been cut to 145,296. This reduction was one reason the Empire's legitimacy foundered, but the Republic did not move to correct the situation. By 1910 there were only 627,000 voters in a population of 22 million. Throughout the 1920s, only between 2.3% and 3.4% of the total population could vote.
The instability and violence of the 1890s were related to the absence of consensus among the elites regarding a governmental model; and the armed forces were divided over their status, relationship to the political regime, and institutional goals. The lack of military unity and the disagreement among civilian elites about the military's role in society explain partially why a long-term military dictatorship was not established, as some officers advocating positivism
wanted. However, military men were very active in politics; early in the decade, ten of the twenty state governors were officers.
The Constituent Assembly that drew up the constitution of 1891 was a battleground between those seeking to limit executive power, which was dictatorial in scope under President Deodoro da Fonseca
, and the Jacobins, radical authoritarians who opposed the paulista coffee oligarchy and who wanted to preserve and intensify presidential authority. The new charter established a federation governed supposedly by a president, a bicameral National Congress (Congresso Nacional; hereafter, Congress), and a judiciary. However, real power was in the regional pátrias and in the hands of local potentates, called "colonels."
There was the constitutional system, and there was the real system of unwritten agreements (coronelismo
) among local bosses, the colonels. Coronelismo, which supported state autonomy, was called the "politics of the governors". Under it, the local oligarchies chose the state governors, who in turn selected the president.
This informal but real distribution of power emerged, the so-called politics of the governors, to take shape as the result of armed struggles and bargaining. The populous and prosperous states of Minas Gerais
and São Paulo
dominated the system and swapped the presidency between them for many years. The system consolidated the state oligarchies around families that had been members of the old monarchical elite. And to check the nationalizing tendencies of the army, this oligarchic republic and its state components strengthened the navy and the state police. In the larger states, the state police were soon turned into small armies. The Head of the Brazilian army ordered that it would doubled so they could defend them.
, abolished as late as 1888 in Brazil, there was an extreme concentration of such landownership reminiscent of feudal aristocracies: 464 great landowners held more than 270,000 km² of land (latifúndios), while 464,000 small and medium-sized farms occupied only 157,000 km².
After the Second Industrial Revolution
in the advanced countries, Latin America
responded to mounting European and North American demand for primary products and foodstuffs. A few key export products— coffee
, sugar
, and cotton
—thus dominated agriculture. Because of specialization
, Brazilian producers neglected domestic consumption, forcing the country to import four-fifths of its grain needs. Like most of Latin America
, the economy at the turn of the century, as a result, rested on certain cash crop
s produced by the fazendeiros, large estate owners exporting primary products overseas who headed their own patriarchal communities. Each typical fazenda
(estate) included the owner's chaplain and overseers, his indigent peasants, his sharecroppers, and his indentured servants.
Brazil's dependence on factory-made goods and loans from the technologically, economically, and politically superior North Atlantic retarded its domestic industrial base. Farm equipment was primitive and largely non-mechanized; peasants tilled the land with hoes and cleared the soil through the inefficient slash-and-burn method. Meanwhile, living standards were generally squalid. Malnutrition, parasitic diseases, and lack of medical facilities limited the average life span in 1920 to twenty-eight years. Then, in no open market could Brazilian industry compete within the comparative advantage
system against the technologically superior Anglo-American economies. In this context happened the Encilhamento
, an Boom & Bust
process that occurred particularly between 1889-91, whose effects, positive and negative ones, were felt in all areas of the Brazilian economy throughout the subsequent decades.
The middle class was not yet active in political life. The patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled the coffee oligarchs to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies. Known as coronelismo
, this was a classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, who would dispense favors in return for loyalty.
Thus, high illiteracy rates went hand in hand with the absence of universal suffrage by secret ballot and one demand for a free press, independent from the then dominant economic influence. In regions where there was not even the telegraph, far from major centers, the news could take 4 to 6 weeks longer to arrive. In those circumstances, for lack of alternatives, along the last decade of nineteen century and the first of the twentieth, was born an free press created by European immigrant anarchists, that due to non-segregated conformation (ethnically speaking) of Brazilian society, it might spread widely, particularly in large cities.
But there was no integrated national economy. Rather, Brazil had a grouping of regional economies that exported their own specialty products to European and North American markets. The absence of an big internal market with overland transportation, except for the mule trains, impeded internal economic integration, political cohesion and military efficiency. The regions, "the Brazils" as the British wisely called them, since long ago, moved to their own rhythms. The Northeast exported its surplus cheap labor and saw its political influence decline as its sugar lost foreign markets to Caribbean producers. The wild rubber boom
in Amazônia
lost its world primacy to efficient Southeast Asian colonial plantations after 1912. The national-oriented market economies of the South were not dramatic, but their growth was steady and by the 1920s allowed Rio Grande do Sul
to exercise considerable political leverage. Real power resided in the coffee-growing states of the Southeast—São Paulo
, Minas Gerais
, and Rio de Janeiro
—which produced the most export revenue. Those three and Rio Grande do Sul
harvested 60% of Brazil
's crops, turned out 75% of its industrial and meat products, and held 80% of its banking resources.
(1893–95), War of Canudos
(1896–97), Vaccine Revolt
(1904), Revolt of the Whip
(1910) and Sedição de Juazeiro (1914). Therefore, with the onset of World War I
, Brazilian elites were interested in studying the events of the Mexican Revolution
with more attention than those related to the War in Europe.
By 1915 it was also clear that the Brazilian elites were determined to maintain its conservative tradition to resist as much as possible in take risks and costs of be actively involved in events with unpredictable consequences, either internally (for example, adopting the free, unrestricted and secret vote in elections) or internationally (making alliances or long-term commitments). Then began a course of conduct that would extend throughout the twentieth century, an isolationist foreign policy interspersed with sporadic automatic alignments against "disturbing elements of peace and international trade"
In August 1916, after almost four years, another rebellion, the Contestado War
ended.
With the great masses of immigrants (especially those from Europe) since the end of the 19th century had arrived communist and anarchist ideas which created problems for the very conservative regime of large estate owners (aka "Café com Leite" republic). With the growth, masses of industrial workers became unhappy with the system and began engaging in massive protests, mostly in São Paulo
and Rio de Janeiro
. After a Big General Strike in 1917 the government attempted to brutally repress the labor movement in order to prevent new movements from beginning. This repression, supported by legislation, was very effective in preventing the formation of real free labor unions.
Ruy Barbosa
was the main opposition leader, campaigning for internal political changes. He also stated that due to the natural conflict between Brazilian commercial interests and the Central Powers
’s strategic ones (demonstrated for example in the German submarine campaign as well as in the Ottoman control over the Middle East), Brazilian involvement in the war would be inevitable. So he advised that the most logical way to proceed would be to follow the USA, which was working for a peace agreement but as the same time since the sinking of the RMS Lusitania
was also preparing for war.
; another side worried about the notices of bloody and unfruitful fighting in trenches, nurturing critical and pacifist feelings in the urban worker classes. Therefore, Brazil remained neutral in World War I
until 1917. But internal problems, aggravated by denunciations of corruption created the need for then president Venceslau Brás to deviate attention, something that could be accomplished by focusing on an external enemy to eventually take advantage of a sense of patriotism.
During 1917, the sinking of Brazilian civilian ships by the German Navy off the French coast created such opportunity. On October 26 the government declared war on the Central Powers
; Germany
, Austria-Hungary
, and Ottoman Empire
. Soon after, the capture of ships from those countries that were on Brazilian coast was ordered and three small military groups where dispatched to the western front. The first one consisted of medical staff from the Army, the second consisted of sergeants and officers, also from the Army, and the third consisted of Navy pilots.
These groups were attached respectively: the Army's groups to French Army
and the Navy's group to British Royal Air Force
. By 1918 all three groups were already in action in France.
By that time Brazil had also sent a Naval Force, the Naval Division in War Operations (DNOG), commanded by Pedro Max Frontin to join the Allies' Naval Forces in the Mediterranean.
However, during 1918, the turbulent social situation that generated in protests against the military recruitment plus the repercussion of then events in Russia only strengthened the provision of the Brazilian elites to remain obstinate with its doctrine of minimal involvement in international conflicts. In addition, the devastating advent of Spanish flu
, amongst other reasons, meant that Brazilian government refrained from getting involved more deeply in the war. Despite its modest participation, Brazil gained the right to partake in the Versailles conference
.
, Paraná
, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul
. Immigrants came mainly from Portugal
, Italy
, Germany
, Spain
, Japan
, Poland
, and the Middle East
. The world's largest Japan
ese community outside of Japan
is in São Paulo. Despite class distinctions, national identity is strong, and racial friction is a relatively new phenomenon. Indigenous full-blooded Indians, located mainly in the northern and western border regions and in the upper Amazon Basin
, constitute less than 1% of the population. Their numbers are declining as contact with the outside world and commercial expansion into the interior increase. Brazilian Government programs to establish reservations and to provide other forms of assistance have existed for years but are controversial and often ineffective. The plurality of Brazilians are of mixed African and European lineage. Immigration increased industrialization and urbanization in Brazil.
undermined the domination of the republic's politics by the landed gentries of that state (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais
, dominated by dairy interests, known then by observers as the politics of café com leite
; 'coffee with milk'.
Long before the first revolts of the urban middle classes to seize power from the coffee oligarchs in the 1920s, however, Brazil's intelligentsia, influenced by the tenets of European positivism
, and farsighted agro-capitalists, dreamed of forging a modern, industrialized society—the "world power of the future". This sentiment was later nurtured throughout the Vargas years and under successive populist governments before the 1964 military junta repudiated Brazilian populism. Although such lofty visionaries were somewhat ineffectual under the Old Republic (1889–1930), the structural changes in the Brazilian economy opened up by the Great War strengthened these demands.
The outbreak of World War I
in August 1914 was the turning point for the dynamic urban sectors. Temporarily abating Britain's overseas economic connections with Brazil, the war was an impetus for domestic manufacturing because of the unavailability of British imports. These structural shifts in the Brazilian economy helped to increase the ranks of the new urban middle classes. Meanwhile, Brazil's manufacturers and those employed by them enjoyed these gains at the expense of the agrarian oligarchies. Coffee
being a nonessential though habit-forming product which affords it a measure of stability and resilience, world demand declined sharply. The central government, dominated by rural gentries, responded to falling world coffee demand by bailing out the oligarchs, reinstating the soon-to-be disastrous valorization program. Sixteen years later, world coffee demand plunged even more precipitously with the Great Depression. Valorization, government intervention to maintain coffee prices by withholding stocks from the market or restricting plantings, then proved to be unsustainable, incapable of curbing insurmountable decline in coffee prices in world markets. By World War I, the reinstatement of government price supports foreshadowed the vulnerability of Brazil's coffee oligarchy to the Great Depression.
Paradoxically, economic crisis spurred industrialization and a resultant boost to the urban middle and working classes. The depressed coffee sector freed up the capital and labor needed for manufacturing finished goods. A chronically adverse balance of trade and declining rate of exchange against foreign currencies was also helpful; Brazilian goods were simply cheaper in the Brazilian market. The state of São Paulo
, with its relatively large capital-base, large immigrant population from Southern and Eastern Europe, and wealth of natural resources, led the trend, eclipsing Rio de Janeiro
as center of Brazilian industry. Industrial production, though concentrated in light industry (food processing, small shops, and textiles) doubled during the war, and the number of enterprises (which stood at about 3,000 in 1908) grew by 5,940 between 1915 and 1918. The war was also a stimulus for the diversification of agriculture. Growing wartime demand of the Allies for staple products, sugar
, beans, and raw materials sparked a new boom for products other than sugar
or coffee
. Foreign interests, however, continued to control the more capital-intensive industries, distinguishing Brazil's industrial revolution from that of the rest of the West.
and coronelismo
eventually gave way to the political aspirations of the new urban groups: professionals, government and white-collar worker
s, merchants, bankers, and industrialists. Increasing support for industrial protectionism
marked 1920s Brazilian politics with little support from a central government dominated by the coffee interests. Under considerable middle class pressure, a more activist, centralized state adapted to represent the interests that the new bourgeoisie had been demanded for years — one that could utilize a state interventionist policy consisting of tax breaks, lowered duties, and import quotas to expand the domestic capital base. Manufacturers, white-collar workers, and the urban proletariat alike had earlier enjoyed the respite of world trade associated with World War I
. However, the coffee oligarchs, relying on a devolved power structure relegating power to their own patrimonial ruling oligarchies, were certainly not interested in regularizing Brazil's personalistic politics or centralizing power. Getúlio Vargas
, leader from 1930 to 1945 and later for a brief period in the 1950s, would later respond to these demands.
During this time period, the state of São Paulo
was at the forefront of Brazil's economic, political, and cultural life. Known colloquially as "locomotive pulling the 20 empty boxcars" (a reference to the 20 other states) and still today Brazil's industrial and commercial center, São Paulo led this trend toward industrialization due to the foreign revenues flowing into the coffee industry.
Prosperity contributed to a rapid rise in the population of recent working class Southern and Eastern European immigrants, a population that contributed to the growth of trade unionism, anarchism
, and socialism
. In the post-World War I
period, Brazil was hit by its first wave of general strikes and the establishment of the Communist Party
in 1922.
Meanwhile, the divergence of interests between the coffee oligarchs—devastated by the Depression—and the burgeoning, dynamic urban sectors was intensifying. According to prominent Latin American historian Benjamin Keen, the task of transforming society "fell to the rapidly growing urban bourgeois groups, and especially to the middle class, which began to voice even more strongly its discontent with the rule of the corrupt rural oligarchies". In contrast, the labor movement remained small and weak (despite a wave of general strikes in the postwar years), lacking ties to the peasantry, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the Brazilian population. As a result, disparate social reform movements would crop up in the 1920s, ultimately culminating in the Revolution of 1930. The 1920s revolt against the seating of Artur da Silva Bernardes
as president signaled the beginning of a struggle by the urban bourgeoisie to seize power from the coffee-producing oligarchy.
This era sparked the failed but famed tenente (lieutenant) rebellion as well. Junior military officers, who had long been active against the ruling coffee oligarchy, staged their own failed revolt in 1922 amid demands for various forms of social modernization, calling for agrarian reform, the formation of cooperatives, and the nationalization of mines. In this historical setting, Getúlio Vargas
emerged as president about a decade later.
Overview
On November 15, 1889 Marshal Deodoro da FonsecaDeodoro da Fonseca
Marshal Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca became the first president of the Republic of Brazil after heading a military coup that deposed Emperor Pedro II and proclaimed the Republic in 1889, disestablishing the Empire of Brazil.- Biography :...
deposed Emperor
Emperor
An emperor is a monarch, usually the sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife or a woman who rules in her own right...
Dom Pedro II, declared Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
a republic
Republic
A republic is a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. In modern times, a common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of...
, and reorganized the government.
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
al democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, but democracy was nominal.
In reality, the elections were rigged, voters in rural areas were pressured or induce to vote for the chosen candidates of their bosses (see coronelismo
Coronelismo
Coronelismo was the system of machine politics in Brazil under the Old Republic . Known also as the "rule of the coronels", the term referred to the classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, particularly...
) and, if all those methods did not work, the election results could still be changed by one sided decisions of Congress's verification of powers commission (election authorities in the República Velha were not independent from the executive and the Legislature, dominated by the ruling oligarchs). This system resulted in the presidency of Brazil alternating between the oligarchies of the dominant states of São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
and Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
. This regime is often referred to as "Café com Leite", 'coffee with milk', after the respective agricultural products of the two states.
This period ended with a military coup that placed Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
, a civilian, in the presidency; Vargas remained as dictator
Dictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
until 1945.
The Brazilian republic was not an ideological offspring of the republics born of the French
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
or American revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
s, although the Brazilian regime would attempt to associate itself with both. The republic did not have enough popular support to risk open elections. It was a regime born of a coup d'état that maintained itself by force. The republicans made Deodoro president (1889–91) and, after a financial crisis, appointed Field Marshal Floriano Vieira Peixoto
Floriano Peixoto
Floriano Vieira de Araújo Peixoto , April 30, 1839, Maceió, Brazil — July 29, 1895, Rio de Janeiro; born in Ipioca , was a Brazilian soldier and politician, a veteran of the War of the Triple Alliance, and the second President of Brazil.-Election and Succession as President:Floriano Peixoto...
Minister of War to ensure the allegiance of the military.
Rule of the landed oligarchies
The officers who joined Field Marshal Deodoro da FonsecaDeodoro da Fonseca
Marshal Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca became the first president of the Republic of Brazil after heading a military coup that deposed Emperor Pedro II and proclaimed the Republic in 1889, disestablishing the Empire of Brazil.- Biography :...
in ending the Empire had made an oath to uphold it. The officer corps would eventually resolve the contradiction by linking its duty to Brazil itself, rather than to transitory governments. The Republic was born rather accidentally: Deodoro had intended only to replace the cabinet, but the republicans manipulated him into founding a republic.
The history of the old Republic was dominated by a quest for a viable form of government to replace the monarchy
Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...
. This quest lurched back and forth between state autonomy and centralization. The constitution of 1891, establishing the Republic of the United States of Brazil (República dos Estados Unidos do Brasil), granted extensive autonomy to the provinces, now called States. The Federal system was adopted, and all powers not granted in the Constitution to the Federal Government belonged to the States. It recognized that the central government did not rule at the local level. The Empire of Brazil had not absorbed fully the regional pátrias, and now they reasserted themselves.
Into the 1920s, the federal government in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
was dominated and managed by a combination of the more powerful states of São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
and Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
and to a lesser extent Pernambuco
Pernambuco
Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. To the north are the states of Paraíba and Ceará, to the west is Piauí, to the south are Alagoas and Bahia, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. There are about of beaches, some of the most beautiful in the...
, Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
and Bahia
Bahia
Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...
.
As a result, the history of the republic is also the story of the development of the army as a national institution. The elimination of the monarchy had reduced the number of national institutions to one, the army. Although the Roman Catholic Church
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
continued its presence throughout the country, it was not national but rather international in its personnel, doctrine, liturgy, and purposes. The army assumed this new position almost haphazardly, filling part of the vacuum left by the collapse of the monarchy and gradually acquiring a doctrine and vision to support its de facto role. Although it had more units and men in Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
and Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
than elsewhere, its presence was felt throughout the country. Its personnel, its interests, its ideology, and its commitments were national in scope.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, much of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, and neighboring Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
expanded the right to vote. Brazil, however, moved to restrict access to the polls. In 1874, in a population of about 10 million, the franchise was held by about one million, but in 1881 this had been cut to 145,296. This reduction was one reason the Empire's legitimacy foundered, but the Republic did not move to correct the situation. By 1910 there were only 627,000 voters in a population of 22 million. Throughout the 1920s, only between 2.3% and 3.4% of the total population could vote.
The instability and violence of the 1890s were related to the absence of consensus among the elites regarding a governmental model; and the armed forces were divided over their status, relationship to the political regime, and institutional goals. The lack of military unity and the disagreement among civilian elites about the military's role in society explain partially why a long-term military dictatorship was not established, as some officers advocating positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
wanted. However, military men were very active in politics; early in the decade, ten of the twenty state governors were officers.
The Constituent Assembly that drew up the constitution of 1891 was a battleground between those seeking to limit executive power, which was dictatorial in scope under President Deodoro da Fonseca
Deodoro da Fonseca
Marshal Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca became the first president of the Republic of Brazil after heading a military coup that deposed Emperor Pedro II and proclaimed the Republic in 1889, disestablishing the Empire of Brazil.- Biography :...
, and the Jacobins, radical authoritarians who opposed the paulista coffee oligarchy and who wanted to preserve and intensify presidential authority. The new charter established a federation governed supposedly by a president, a bicameral National Congress (Congresso Nacional; hereafter, Congress), and a judiciary. However, real power was in the regional pátrias and in the hands of local potentates, called "colonels."
There was the constitutional system, and there was the real system of unwritten agreements (coronelismo
Coronelismo
Coronelismo was the system of machine politics in Brazil under the Old Republic . Known also as the "rule of the coronels", the term referred to the classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, particularly...
) among local bosses, the colonels. Coronelismo, which supported state autonomy, was called the "politics of the governors". Under it, the local oligarchies chose the state governors, who in turn selected the president.
This informal but real distribution of power emerged, the so-called politics of the governors, to take shape as the result of armed struggles and bargaining. The populous and prosperous states of Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
and São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
dominated the system and swapped the presidency between them for many years. The system consolidated the state oligarchies around families that had been members of the old monarchical elite. And to check the nationalizing tendencies of the army, this oligarchic republic and its state components strengthened the navy and the state police. In the larger states, the state police were soon turned into small armies. The Head of the Brazilian army ordered that it would doubled so they could defend them.
Latifúndio economies
At the turn of the century, the vast majority of the population lived in communities, though accumulating capitalist surpluses for overseas export, that were essentially semi-feudal in structure. Because of the legacy of Ibero-American slaverySlavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, abolished as late as 1888 in Brazil, there was an extreme concentration of such landownership reminiscent of feudal aristocracies: 464 great landowners held more than 270,000 km² of land (latifúndios), while 464,000 small and medium-sized farms occupied only 157,000 km².
After the Second Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
in the advanced countries, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
responded to mounting European and North American demand for primary products and foodstuffs. A few key export products— coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
, sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
, and cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
—thus dominated agriculture. Because of specialization
Departmentalization
Departmentalization refers to the process of grouping activities into departments.Division of labour creates specialists who need coordination. This coordination is facilitated by grouping specialists together in departments....
, Brazilian producers neglected domestic consumption, forcing the country to import four-fifths of its grain needs. Like most of Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, the economy at the turn of the century, as a result, rested on certain cash crop
Cash crop
In agriculture, a cash crop is a crop which is grown for profit.The term is used to differentiate from subsistence crops, which are those fed to the producer's own livestock or grown as food for the producer's family...
s produced by the fazendeiros, large estate owners exporting primary products overseas who headed their own patriarchal communities. Each typical fazenda
Fazenda
Fazendas were coffee plantations that spread into the interior of Brazil between 1840 and 1896. They created major export commodities for Brazilian trade, but also led to intensification of slavery in Brazil.- Creation of fazendas :...
(estate) included the owner's chaplain and overseers, his indigent peasants, his sharecroppers, and his indentured servants.
Brazil's dependence on factory-made goods and loans from the technologically, economically, and politically superior North Atlantic retarded its domestic industrial base. Farm equipment was primitive and largely non-mechanized; peasants tilled the land with hoes and cleared the soil through the inefficient slash-and-burn method. Meanwhile, living standards were generally squalid. Malnutrition, parasitic diseases, and lack of medical facilities limited the average life span in 1920 to twenty-eight years. Then, in no open market could Brazilian industry compete within the comparative advantage
Comparative advantage
In economics, the law of comparative advantage says that two countries will both gain from trade if, in the absence of trade, they have different relative costs for producing the same goods...
system against the technologically superior Anglo-American economies. In this context happened the Encilhamento
Encilhamento
The Encilhamento was a economic bubble that boomed between late 1880s and early 1890s in Brazil, having burst during the provisional government of Deodoro da Fonseca , then becoming a financial crisis...
, an Boom & Bust
Boom and bust
A credit boom-bust cycle is an episode characterized by a sustained increase in several economics indicators followed by a sharp and rapid contraction. Commonly the boom is driven by a rapid expansion of credit to the private sector accompanied with rising prices of commodities and stock market index...
process that occurred particularly between 1889-91, whose effects, positive and negative ones, were felt in all areas of the Brazilian economy throughout the subsequent decades.
The middle class was not yet active in political life. The patron-client political machines of the countryside enabled the coffee oligarchs to dominate state structures to their advantage, particularly the weak central state structures that effectively devolved power to local agrarian oligarchies. Known as coronelismo
Coronelismo
Coronelismo was the system of machine politics in Brazil under the Old Republic . Known also as the "rule of the coronels", the term referred to the classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, particularly...
, this was a classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, who would dispense favors in return for loyalty.
Thus, high illiteracy rates went hand in hand with the absence of universal suffrage by secret ballot and one demand for a free press, independent from the then dominant economic influence. In regions where there was not even the telegraph, far from major centers, the news could take 4 to 6 weeks longer to arrive. In those circumstances, for lack of alternatives, along the last decade of nineteen century and the first of the twentieth, was born an free press created by European immigrant anarchists, that due to non-segregated conformation (ethnically speaking) of Brazilian society, it might spread widely, particularly in large cities.
But there was no integrated national economy. Rather, Brazil had a grouping of regional economies that exported their own specialty products to European and North American markets. The absence of an big internal market with overland transportation, except for the mule trains, impeded internal economic integration, political cohesion and military efficiency. The regions, "the Brazils" as the British wisely called them, since long ago, moved to their own rhythms. The Northeast exported its surplus cheap labor and saw its political influence decline as its sugar lost foreign markets to Caribbean producers. The wild rubber boom
Rubber boom
The rubber boom was an important part of the economic and social history of Brazil and Amazonian regions of neighboring countries, being related with the extraction and commercialization of rubber...
in Amazônia
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
lost its world primacy to efficient Southeast Asian colonial plantations after 1912. The national-oriented market economies of the South were not dramatic, but their growth was steady and by the 1920s allowed Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
to exercise considerable political leverage. Real power resided in the coffee-growing states of the Southeast—São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
, Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
, and Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
—which produced the most export revenue. Those three and Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
harvested 60% of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
's crops, turned out 75% of its industrial and meat products, and held 80% of its banking resources.
Preceding
The period since the Republic Declaration in 1889 had been plentiful of political and social rebellions subdued by the regime: Revolta da Armada(2 Navy's Rebellions; 1891 & 1893–94), Federalist Riograndense RevolutionFederalist Riograndense Revolution (Brazil)
The Federalist Riograndense Revolution was a revolution in the State of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil against the Republic proclaimed in 1889.Inspired by the monarchist Gaspar Silveira Martins, it had as military head Gumercindo Saraiva...
(1893–95), War of Canudos
War of Canudos
The War of Canudos was a conflict between the state of Brazil and a group of some 30,000 settlers who had founded their own community in the northeastern state of Bahia, named Canudos...
(1896–97), Vaccine Revolt
Vaccine Revolt
The Vaccine Revolt, or Vaccine Rebellion, was a period of civil disorder which occurred in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 10 through 16, 1904.-Antecedents:...
(1904), Revolt of the Whip
Revolt of the Whip
The Revolt of the LashOther names for the mutiny include the "Revolt of the Whip" or the "Revolt against the Lash." , was a 1910 naval incident that occurred in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil...
(1910) and Sedição de Juazeiro (1914). Therefore, with the onset of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Brazilian elites were interested in studying the events of the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
with more attention than those related to the War in Europe.
By 1915 it was also clear that the Brazilian elites were determined to maintain its conservative tradition to resist as much as possible in take risks and costs of be actively involved in events with unpredictable consequences, either internally (for example, adopting the free, unrestricted and secret vote in elections) or internationally (making alliances or long-term commitments). Then began a course of conduct that would extend throughout the twentieth century, an isolationist foreign policy interspersed with sporadic automatic alignments against "disturbing elements of peace and international trade"
In August 1916, after almost four years, another rebellion, the Contestado War
Contestado War
The Contestado War , broadly speaking, was a guerrilla war for land between settlers and landowners, the latter supported by the Brazilian state's police and military forces, that lasted from October 1912 to August 1916....
ended.
With the great masses of immigrants (especially those from Europe) since the end of the 19th century had arrived communist and anarchist ideas which created problems for the very conservative regime of large estate owners (aka "Café com Leite" republic). With the growth, masses of industrial workers became unhappy with the system and began engaging in massive protests, mostly in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
and Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
. After a Big General Strike in 1917 the government attempted to brutally repress the labor movement in order to prevent new movements from beginning. This repression, supported by legislation, was very effective in preventing the formation of real free labor unions.
Ruy Barbosa
Ruy Barbosa
Ruy Barbosa de Oliveira was a Brazilian writer, jurist, and politician.Born in Salvador da Bahia, he was a federal representative, senator, Minister of Finance and diplomat. For his distinguished participation in the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, he earned the nickname "Eagle of the Hague"...
was the main opposition leader, campaigning for internal political changes. He also stated that due to the natural conflict between Brazilian commercial interests and the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
’s strategic ones (demonstrated for example in the German submarine campaign as well as in the Ottoman control over the Middle East), Brazilian involvement in the war would be inevitable. So he advised that the most logical way to proceed would be to follow the USA, which was working for a peace agreement but as the same time since the sinking of the RMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship entered passenger service with the Cunard Line on 26 August 1907 and continued on the line's heavily-traveled passenger service between Liverpool, England and New...
was also preparing for war.
War
There were two main lines of thought regarding Brazil's joining of the war: One, led by Ruy Barbosa called for joining the EntenteAllies of World War I
The Entente Powers were the countries at war with the Central Powers during World War I. The members of the Triple Entente were the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire; Italy entered the war on their side in 1915...
; another side worried about the notices of bloody and unfruitful fighting in trenches, nurturing critical and pacifist feelings in the urban worker classes. Therefore, Brazil remained neutral in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
until 1917. But internal problems, aggravated by denunciations of corruption created the need for then president Venceslau Brás to deviate attention, something that could be accomplished by focusing on an external enemy to eventually take advantage of a sense of patriotism.
During 1917, the sinking of Brazilian civilian ships by the German Navy off the French coast created such opportunity. On October 26 the government declared war on the Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
; Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
, and Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. Soon after, the capture of ships from those countries that were on Brazilian coast was ordered and three small military groups where dispatched to the western front. The first one consisted of medical staff from the Army, the second consisted of sergeants and officers, also from the Army, and the third consisted of Navy pilots.
These groups were attached respectively: the Army's groups to French Army
French Army
The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre , is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces.As of 2010, the army employs 123,100 regulars, 18,350 part-time reservists and 7,700 Legionnaires. All soldiers are professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in...
and the Navy's group to British Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
. By 1918 all three groups were already in action in France.
By that time Brazil had also sent a Naval Force, the Naval Division in War Operations (DNOG), commanded by Pedro Max Frontin to join the Allies' Naval Forces in the Mediterranean.
However, during 1918, the turbulent social situation that generated in protests against the military recruitment plus the repercussion of then events in Russia only strengthened the provision of the Brazilian elites to remain obstinate with its doctrine of minimal involvement in international conflicts. In addition, the devastating advent of Spanish flu
Spanish flu
The 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus . It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin...
, amongst other reasons, meant that Brazilian government refrained from getting involved more deeply in the war. Despite its modest participation, Brazil gained the right to partake in the Versailles conference
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
.
Demographic changes
From 1875 until 1960, about five million Europeans emigrated to Brazil, settling mainly in the four southern states of São PauloSão Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
, Paraná
Paraná (state)
Paraná is one of the states of Brazil, located in the South of the country, bordered on the north by São Paulo state, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by Santa Catarina state and the Misiones Province of Argentina, and on the west by Mato Grosso do Sul and the republic of Paraguay,...
, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul
Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...
. Immigrants came mainly from Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
. The world's largest Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese community outside of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
is in São Paulo. Despite class distinctions, national identity is strong, and racial friction is a relatively new phenomenon. Indigenous full-blooded Indians, located mainly in the northern and western border regions and in the upper Amazon Basin
Amazon Basin
The Amazon Basin is the part of South America drained by the Amazon River and its tributaries that drains an area of about , or roughly 40 percent of South America. The basin is located in the countries of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela...
, constitute less than 1% of the population. Their numbers are declining as contact with the outside world and commercial expansion into the interior increase. Brazilian Government programs to establish reservations and to provide other forms of assistance have existed for years but are controversial and often ineffective. The plurality of Brazilians are of mixed African and European lineage. Immigration increased industrialization and urbanization in Brazil.
Developments under the Old Republic
Demographic changes and structural shifts in the economy, however, threatened the primacy of the agrarian oligarchies. Under the Old Republic (1889–1930), the growth of the urban middle sectors, though retarded by dependency and entrenched oligarchy, was eventually strong enough to propel itself to the forefront of Brazilian political life. In time, growing trade, commerce, and industry in São PauloSão Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
undermined the domination of the republic's politics by the landed gentries of that state (dominated by the coffee industry) and Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais
Minas Gerais is one of the 26 states of Brazil, of which it is the second most populous, the third richest, and the fourth largest in area. Minas Gerais is the Brazilian state with the largest number of Presidents of Brazil, the current one, Dilma Rousseff, being one of them. The capital is the...
, dominated by dairy interests, known then by observers as the politics of café com leite
Café com leite
Café com leite was a term that referred to the domination of Brazilian politics under the Old Republic by the landed gentries of São Paulo and Minas Gerais...
; 'coffee with milk'.
Long before the first revolts of the urban middle classes to seize power from the coffee oligarchs in the 1920s, however, Brazil's intelligentsia, influenced by the tenets of European positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
, and farsighted agro-capitalists, dreamed of forging a modern, industrialized society—the "world power of the future". This sentiment was later nurtured throughout the Vargas years and under successive populist governments before the 1964 military junta repudiated Brazilian populism. Although such lofty visionaries were somewhat ineffectual under the Old Republic (1889–1930), the structural changes in the Brazilian economy opened up by the Great War strengthened these demands.
The outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in August 1914 was the turning point for the dynamic urban sectors. Temporarily abating Britain's overseas economic connections with Brazil, the war was an impetus for domestic manufacturing because of the unavailability of British imports. These structural shifts in the Brazilian economy helped to increase the ranks of the new urban middle classes. Meanwhile, Brazil's manufacturers and those employed by them enjoyed these gains at the expense of the agrarian oligarchies. Coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
being a nonessential though habit-forming product which affords it a measure of stability and resilience, world demand declined sharply. The central government, dominated by rural gentries, responded to falling world coffee demand by bailing out the oligarchs, reinstating the soon-to-be disastrous valorization program. Sixteen years later, world coffee demand plunged even more precipitously with the Great Depression. Valorization, government intervention to maintain coffee prices by withholding stocks from the market or restricting plantings, then proved to be unsustainable, incapable of curbing insurmountable decline in coffee prices in world markets. By World War I, the reinstatement of government price supports foreshadowed the vulnerability of Brazil's coffee oligarchy to the Great Depression.
Paradoxically, economic crisis spurred industrialization and a resultant boost to the urban middle and working classes. The depressed coffee sector freed up the capital and labor needed for manufacturing finished goods. A chronically adverse balance of trade and declining rate of exchange against foreign currencies was also helpful; Brazilian goods were simply cheaper in the Brazilian market. The state of São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
, with its relatively large capital-base, large immigrant population from Southern and Eastern Europe, and wealth of natural resources, led the trend, eclipsing Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
as center of Brazilian industry. Industrial production, though concentrated in light industry (food processing, small shops, and textiles) doubled during the war, and the number of enterprises (which stood at about 3,000 in 1908) grew by 5,940 between 1915 and 1918. The war was also a stimulus for the diversification of agriculture. Growing wartime demand of the Allies for staple products, sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
, beans, and raw materials sparked a new boom for products other than sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
or coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
. Foreign interests, however, continued to control the more capital-intensive industries, distinguishing Brazil's industrial revolution from that of the rest of the West.
Struggle for reform
With manufacturing on the rise and the coffee oligarchs imperiled, the old order of café com leiteCafé com leite
Café com leite was a term that referred to the domination of Brazilian politics under the Old Republic by the landed gentries of São Paulo and Minas Gerais...
and coronelismo
Coronelismo
Coronelismo was the system of machine politics in Brazil under the Old Republic . Known also as the "rule of the coronels", the term referred to the classic boss system under which the control of patronage was centralized in the hands of a locally dominant oligarch known as a coronel, particularly...
eventually gave way to the political aspirations of the new urban groups: professionals, government and white-collar worker
White-collar worker
The term white-collar worker refers to a person who performs professional, managerial, or administrative work, in contrast with a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor...
s, merchants, bankers, and industrialists. Increasing support for industrial protectionism
Protectionism
Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...
marked 1920s Brazilian politics with little support from a central government dominated by the coffee interests. Under considerable middle class pressure, a more activist, centralized state adapted to represent the interests that the new bourgeoisie had been demanded for years — one that could utilize a state interventionist policy consisting of tax breaks, lowered duties, and import quotas to expand the domestic capital base. Manufacturers, white-collar workers, and the urban proletariat alike had earlier enjoyed the respite of world trade associated with World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. However, the coffee oligarchs, relying on a devolved power structure relegating power to their own patrimonial ruling oligarchies, were certainly not interested in regularizing Brazil's personalistic politics or centralizing power. Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
, leader from 1930 to 1945 and later for a brief period in the 1950s, would later respond to these demands.
During this time period, the state of São Paulo
São Paulo (state)
São Paulo is a state in Brazil. It is the major industrial and economic powerhouse of the Brazilian economy. Named after Saint Paul, São Paulo has the largest population, industrial complex, and economic production in the country. It is the richest state in Brazil...
was at the forefront of Brazil's economic, political, and cultural life. Known colloquially as "locomotive pulling the 20 empty boxcars" (a reference to the 20 other states) and still today Brazil's industrial and commercial center, São Paulo led this trend toward industrialization due to the foreign revenues flowing into the coffee industry.
Prosperity contributed to a rapid rise in the population of recent working class Southern and Eastern European immigrants, a population that contributed to the growth of trade unionism, anarchism
Anarchism in Brazil
Anarchism was an influential contributor to the social politics of Brazils Old Republic. During the epoch of mass migrations of European labourers at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, anarchist ideas started to spread, particularly amongst the country’s labour...
, and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. In the post-World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
period, Brazil was hit by its first wave of general strikes and the establishment of the Communist Party
Brazilian Communist Party
Brazilian Communist Party is the oldest political party still active in Brazil, founded in 1922, and one of the only Brazilian parties with a Stalinist orientation...
in 1922.
Meanwhile, the divergence of interests between the coffee oligarchs—devastated by the Depression—and the burgeoning, dynamic urban sectors was intensifying. According to prominent Latin American historian Benjamin Keen, the task of transforming society "fell to the rapidly growing urban bourgeois groups, and especially to the middle class, which began to voice even more strongly its discontent with the rule of the corrupt rural oligarchies". In contrast, the labor movement remained small and weak (despite a wave of general strikes in the postwar years), lacking ties to the peasantry, who constituted the overwhelming majority of the Brazilian population. As a result, disparate social reform movements would crop up in the 1920s, ultimately culminating in the Revolution of 1930. The 1920s revolt against the seating of Artur da Silva Bernardes
Artur da Silva Bernardes
Artur da Silva Bernardes was a Brazilian politician in the early 20th century. Born in Viçosa, Minas Gerais, he was elected governor of Minas Gerais in 1918. In 1922, he was elected president of Brazil and served until 1926. Facing a military rebellion, Bernardes ruled under a state of siege...
as president signaled the beginning of a struggle by the urban bourgeoisie to seize power from the coffee-producing oligarchy.
This era sparked the failed but famed tenente (lieutenant) rebellion as well. Junior military officers, who had long been active against the ruling coffee oligarchy, staged their own failed revolt in 1922 amid demands for various forms of social modernization, calling for agrarian reform, the formation of cooperatives, and the nationalization of mines. In this historical setting, Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history to Emperor Pedro II...
emerged as president about a decade later.
External links
- http://www.grandesguerras.com.br (Portuguese) site of GrandesGuerras (WorldWars) Magazine
- http://www.exercito.gov.br (Portuguese) Official Site of Brazilian ArmyBrazilian ArmyThe Brazilian Army is the land arm of the Brazilian Military. The Brazilian Army has fought in several international conflicts, mostly in South America and during the 19th century, such as the Brazilian War of Independence , Argentina-Brazil War , War of the Farrapos , Platine War , Uruguayan War ...