Notes on Brazilian History: War Against Paraguay and Gradual Emancipation

Introduction

  • Case study: Big changes in Brazil running parallel with gradual emancipation.

  • Focus on processes and specific events leading to something new.

War Against Paraguay (War of the Triple Alliance)

  • Context: A major conflict in South American history involving Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

  • Britain's Role:

    • Interested in selling goods to Latin American consumers.

    • Dislikes war because it disrupts trade and reduces potential consumers.

    • Main Goal: Sell British products to Latin American consumers.

Causes of the War

  • Dispute over access to rivers for commerce.

  • Paraguay:

    • Landlocked and relies on river access for trade.

    • Isolated: Does not have foreign debt in the 19th century.

  • Yerba Mate:

    • Wild growing tea plant with external demand by 1850.

    • Paraguay had an opening to sell Yerba Mate for foreign currency.

Conflict Escalation

  • Diplomatic dispute with the Consiliacao cabinet in Brazil.

  • Consiliacao Cabinet: Joint Conservative-Liberal cabinet focused on internal improvements and development.

  • Dispute grows into a war when Paraguay invades Brazil in the 1860s.

  • Brazil's Response:

    • Emperor Pedro II declares war.

Alliances

  • Triple Alliance: Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay ally against Paraguay.

  • Uruguay: Government tied to Brazil.

  • Argentina: Also against Paraguay.

  • Brazil's Role: Keeps the war going; Argentina and Uruguay exit after achieving their goals.

Impact and Consequences

  • Length of the War: Starts in December 1864, Paraguay's army defeated by 1868.

  • Demographic Impact on Paraguay: Historians debate the extent to which the war decimated the male population.

  • Casualties: Brazil lost more soldiers to gastrointestinal illness than combat. Poor conditions of feeding and medical treatment.

  • Brazil's Perspective: Paraguayan leader viewed as the "Osama bin Laden" of Brazil.

  • Prolonged Conflict: Brazil continues the war to find and eliminate the Paraguayan leader.

Dissatisfaction and Political Shifts

  • Military Dissatisfaction: Junior officers dissatisfied with the constitutional monarchy's performance.

  • Civilian Politicians: Military feels civilian politicians failed to provide good leadership.

Caxias and Political Maneuvering

  • Caxias: A conservative leader appointed to command the war effort in the second phase.

  • Condition for Command: Caxias demands the removal of the liberal cabinet.

  • Liberals' Disaffection: Liberals are ousted, leading to disaffection.

    • Some become Republicans, advocating for a change in the constitutional order.

Rise of Republicanism

  • Republicans: Not necessarily for low taxes, but against the constitutional order.

  • Elected to Parliament: Republicans work within the system to change it.

  • Processes from the War:

    • Junior military officers unhappy with the constitutional monarchy.

    • Liberal politicians growing unhappy with the constitutional monarchy.

    • Some create the Republican system.

End of Slavery and External Pressures

  • Losers: Plantation owners in the Paraíba Valley and Center-South.

  • External Factors: Diplomatic and opinion pressure from outside against Brazil for maintaining slavery.

Capital Outflow from Britain

  • Post-Industrial Revolution: Britain gets wealthy with surplus capital.

  • Capital Outflows: Money flows to South America for profitable investments.

  • British Investment: British capital flows into South America, especially Brazil, seeking investment opportunities.

  • Falling Rate of Profit: Britain had a literally industrial revolution so much money that the rate of return of the average unit/pound/dollar went down.

Foreign Merchants and Entrepreneurs

  • Merchants: Expert in trades; import textile looms to create factories.

  • Manufacturing: Some manufacturing in Brazil involves both Brazilian entrepreneurs and foreign merchants.

Freestanding Corporations

  • British Companies: Organized in Britain to do specific things in other countries (not multinational corporations).

  • Ease of Company Formation: Easy to organize a company in Britain at this time. Very administrative, if you raise capital very easy to create a company.

  • Brazilian Ambassador: Often added to the board of directors of these companies to build railroads.

  • Joint-Stock Limited Liability Corporations: Raise money through IPOs; shareholders' liability limited to the value of their shares.

Infrastructure Projects

  • Railroads: Biggest target of foreign investment, always accompanied by a telegraph line.

  • Port Improvements: Needed for larger steamships, involving channelization and deeper channels.

  • Urban Improvements: Gas lighting companies for street lights.

Economic Principles

  • Savings Rate: Lower-income countries have low savings rates, need capital from rich countries.

  • Capital Migration: Capital migrates where the rate of profit is high.

  • Transportation Improvements:

    • Farmers everywhere want improvement because it it raises the price that they receive for what they're producing over what it would be if they were paying a higher transport cost.

Impact on Farming

  • Reduced Transport Costs:

    • Shrinks gap between farm price and port price.

    • Raises the farm gate price.

    • Lowers the port price.

    • Increases world market share.

  • Land Value: Improvements raise the value of farmland. The rise in the farm gate price shows up in the land value, the value that farm goes up.

Beneficiaries of Capital Flows

  • Factory Owners: Can compete with imported cloth.

  • Coffee Growers: Care about profits and wealth.

Mass Migration

  • Economic Downturn in Europe: Recession leads people to think about migrating. The mass migration is created because there is no money or jobs here.

  • Transatlantic Migration: Mass migration across the Atlantic.

  • Cheap Labor: Brazil attracts migrants as cheap workers become available in Europe.

  • Subsidies and Hostels: Brazil offers subsidies for travel costs and creates immigrant hostels to match workers with farmers.

Destinations in Brazil

  • São Paulo and South of Minas Gerais: Regions where land is not exhausted and connected to ports by railroads.

  • Indentured Workers: Migrants sign contracts as indentured workers, similar to sharecropping.

Origins of Migrants

  • Southern Europe: Primarily from Southern Europe (e.g., Italy).

  • German Immigration: Earlier and further south, sometimes unsuccessful model farm experiments.

Changes in Brazil

  • Population Growth: New people and disproportionately young population.

Market Signals

  • Europe: Depressed agricultural market sends a negative signal.

  • Brazil: Sends the opposite signal due to available land.

Temporary Migration

  • Wheat Harvest: People show up in Argentina or Southern Brazil to work at harvest season. Some do it multiple times.

Consequences

  • Rapid Economic Growth: Railroads and migrants create growth in the South of Brazil.

Discontent in the Military

  • Frustration: Junior army officers frustrated with failures of constitutional monarchy during the war against Paraguay.

Positivism and Influence on Military

  • A new way of thinking about ideologies.

  • Comte : People dig coming out of the enlightenment, science, math, thinking. Secretly a bunch of these people wanna figure out how to do, what is that? Alchemy. Comte sort of said, Hey, We think scientifically about everything now. All our big breakthroughs are coming from science y thinking. We should think about human societies in a science y kind of way.

  • Positivism: A scientific approach to society, emphasizing empirical observation and a strong government.

  • Influence in Latin America: Comes from France, influences elites in Latin American countries (francophile).

  • Positivist Influence on Brazlian Military: Shows up hey. It comes out of France. The leads in Latin American countries are generally francophile despite all the British investment. Most of the officers some officers in the military are like battlefield commissioned people during the war against Paraguay.

  • Forties. So there, the professors are almost all engineers. Being a military officer is about fortifications, artillery, survey, this sort thing, building roads for logistics. So everybody's trained as an engineer. These engineering professors are heavily influenced by French engineering, French military engineers.

  • Taught Ideologies for Brazil prospects as a great nation and about its failure to achieve great nation status.

    • Military Academies: Officers trained as engineers, influenced by French military engineers.

Republican Movement

  • Progressive Farmers: Republican farmers in Sao Paulo employ European immigrant labor.

  • Radicals in Rio de Janeiro: Civilians who are Republicans and positivists.

  • Agitation: Groups come together and agitate over the eighteen eighties.

Bloodless Coup

  • Abolition of Slavery (1888): Paudaheiba Valley Conservatives are no longer loyal to the emperor.

  • Bloodless Coup: Junior army officers lead a coup, ending the constitutional monarchy.

  • Overthrow: Junior army officer on a horseback led the army officers to the seat of government. Tell them that constitutional monarchy is over.

  • Emperor's Absence: The emperor is at the summer palace, escaping heat and mosquitoes.

  • Telegraph: Army messages the emperor that army has taken. over.

  • The end: Pedro the second and his family go down from the hill.