Brazil and the USA: Similarities in Urban Development

Image
  Introduction My dissertation focused on the Brazilian production and reception of representations of the United States as a growing model of modern society in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Based on the analysis of parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, diplomatic correspondence, books, students' journals, and textual and pictorial advertisements in newspapers, among other historical documents, my findings indicate that the United States emerged as a new axis of reflection on the meaning of modernity for Brazilians well before the historical break traditionally chosen by historians as a landmark in the development of the United States as a modern world. By doing so, a gap in historiography has been identified: there has been no comprehensive examination of the United States' influence in Brazil previous to that historical watershed, as well as prior to Brazil's first republican regime's open relationship with the US government. My findings also challen
Post a Comment

What Do Brazil and the USA Have in Common?

 

José Silvestre Rebello, the Brazilian representative to the United States, began negotiations in New York in 1825 to purchase a steam vessel from the New York South America Steam Boat Association, which had recently been formed.

 One of Rebello's primary responsibilities was to purchase riverboats suited for navigating the Amazon River. However, the strategies suggested in Rio de Janeiro contrasted with Amazonian interests. On that occasion, the governor of the Amazonian province of Pará refused to allow Rebello's efforts to procure a ship built for the service of Amazon waters to advance up the river.633 After that first attempt, it would be forty-one years before the Amazon fluvial system was opened up for global travel. Despite the failure of this early effort, American merchants remained the most actively engaged foreigners in striving to reduce the barriers to accessing the Amazon basin's riches.

Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Virginia-born, self-educated physicist who served as Superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory and Hydrographical Office from 1844 to 1861, exemplified this drive.634 Maury championed the United States' drive to become the primary mediator in Brazilian international affairs, particularly in securing access to the Amazon's abundant natural resources. However, Brazil's strict protectionist policy toward the Amazon fluvial system posed a significant challenge to Maury's intentions.635 Maury highlighted this policy as the key impediment to overcome, and the Amazon question took center stage in the Arthur P. Whitaker, 'José Silvestre Rebello: The First Diplomatic Representative of Brazil in the United States', HAHR 20 (1940), 380-401, 391-393. Whitfield J. Bell Jr., 'The relationship of Herndon and Gibbon's expedition of the Amazon to North American slavery, 1850-1855,' HAHR, 19:4 (Nov., 1939), 494-503, 497. See also, Fontaine, Brazil and the United States, esp. 'Brazilian-American relations, 1808-1889', 10-14. (635). The majority of imperial state managers chose protectionism, government intervention, and a lack of trust in market mechanisms. José Murilo de Carvalho, 'O Brasil no Conselho do Estado: Imagem e modelo', Dados. Revista de Ciências Sociais (R. Janeiro), 25 (1982), 379-408, 392.
The ties between the United States and Brazil. In this setting, an image of the United States as a nation with imperial ambitions, targeting Brazil for the first time, began to circulate among Brazilian politicians and lawmakers. These representations were fostered by the reception of news in Brazil of certain key events in the development of US foreign policy toward Central America: notably, the annexation of Texas in 1845; the US-Mexico War of 1846-1848; and, to a lesser extent, the leaking of US plans to acquire Cuba from Spain, either peacefully or militarily, in 1854.636

By the mid-1850s, the United States' image as a frightening force in terms of territorial and commercial growth was becoming increasingly popular throughout the Western Hemisphere.



This theory became popular in Brazilian political circles. Debates in the Council of State and the Parliamentary Chambers are expressive in this regard. During William Trousdale's mandate as US representative in Rio de Janeiro (1853-1857), the principal goal was to gain unrestricted navigation of Amazon waters for the United States. In 1854, Paulino José Soares de Sousa stated that legislators would do well to recall the most recent steps made by US foreign policymakers in Central America in order to assess the 'dangers of our situation' accurately. The emphasis was mostly on the risk that U.S. citizen settlements could pose to the host country, with the instance of Texas at the forefront of legislators' minds. 

In fact: Conclusion

Brazilian academics has long debated the role of the United States in the constitutional formulation of republican Brazil. The purpose of this chapter was to look beyond the institutional issues that had piqued the interest of Brazilian observers of US society throughout the nineteenth century. It tried to rethink the importance of American civil society and citizenship among Brazil's ruling and intellectual classes. We've spoken about how the United States played a significant part in the disputes over political and administrative decentralization between the Viscount of Uruguai and Tavares Bastos in the 1860s. We demonstrated that both thinkers viewed the United States federal republic and people self-government positively. They recognized the strong British roots of American peoples' habits of active participation in local civic life; however, they saw that such practices were evolving in the United States as a result of their articulation with the social bases of society centered on community life and the principle of association.

However, various lessons were learned from the United States' societal model in terms of what was realistic in Brazil.


Because there were no established traditions of political and civil liberties among the Brazilian people, the Viscount of Uruguai argued that it was the responsibility of the central government to establish such. Tavares Bastos, on the other hand, used the example of US decentralization and self-government to back up his demands for the monarchy's political and administrative decentralization in order to promote complete political and economic growth in the Empire's provinces. Similarly, we have demonstrated that the United States model of political organization became popular among the Empire's most economically vibrant elites, particularly the Paulista coffee growers, through Tavares Bastos' The Province, the most compelling justification for the decentralization of the Brazilian monarchy. In response, this part of the elite led the call for republicanism during the Empire's final decades, following the example of the United States' decentralized republic.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brazil and the USA: Exploring Economic and Social Parallels

Image
  Steamship lines serve the United States. Brazil's early gravitation toward the orbit of US production. Introduction Although most historians of the British Empire have overlooked Britain's participation in Latin America, specialists from this region and others have produced a significant number of publications on the subject. Brazilianists' interest with Britain's role in comprehending Brazil's evolution during the nineteenth century is surely a case in point. However, empirical study on British influence in Latin America has generally focused on economic and business relationships rather than political or social issues. As described in the introduction of this thesis, this tendency holds true in the instance of Brazil.6 This chapter argues that Brazilian economic history has overlooked the economic relevance and cultural influence of the early US commercial presence in Brazil, focusing solely on British supremacy in the country. According to our sources, the Unit
Read more

Cultural Convergences Between Brazil and the USA

Image
  Steamship lines serve the United States. Brazil's early gravitation toward the orbit of US production. Introduction Although most historians of the British Empire have overlooked Britain's participation in Latin America, specialists from this region and others have produced a significant number of publications on the subject. Brazilianists' interest with Britain's role in comprehending Brazil's evolution during the nineteenth century is surely a case in point. However, empirical study on British influence in Latin America has generally focused on economic and business relationships rather than political or social issues. As described in the introduction of this thesis, this tendency holds true in the instance of Brazil. This chapter argues that Brazilian economic history has overlooked the economic relevance and cultural influence of the early US commercial presence in Brazil, focusing solely on British supremacy in the country. According to our sources, the Unite
Read more