Brazilian images of the United States, 1861-1898: A working version of modernity? Natalia Bas University College London PhD thesis I, Natalia Bas, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Abstract For most of the nineteenth-century, the Brazilian liberal elites found in the ‘modernity’ of the European Enlightenment all that they considered best at the time. Britain and France, in particular, provided them with the paradigms of a modern civilisation. This thesis, however, challenges and complements this view by demonstrating that as early as the 1860s the United States began to emerge as a new model of civilisation in the Brazilian debate about modernisation. The general picture portrayed by the historiography of nineteenth-century Brazil is still today inclined to overlook the meaningful place that U.S. society had from as early as the 1860s in the Brazilian imagination regarding the concept of a modern society. This thesis shows how the images of the United States were a pivotal source of political and cultural inspiration for the political and intellectual elites of the second half of the nineteenth century concerned with the modernisation of Brazil. Drawing primarily on parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, diplomatic correspondence, books, student journals and textual and pictorial advertisements in newspapers, this dissertation analyses four different dimensions of the Brazilian representations of the United States. They are: the abolition of slavery, political and civil freedoms, democratic access to scientific and applied education, and democratic access to goods of consumption. These four themes together reveal the centrality of the relationship between the idea of modern civilisation and the United States in the imagination of the Brazilian liberal elites. The chronological framework of this research covers the period between the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) and the Spanish- American War (1898). These were crucial decades in the development of U.S. power and a period when images of the United States began to circulate far more widely than hitherto in Brazil. Even though this study shows that positive and negative representations of the U.S. society coexisted, clashed and changed in the courte durée , the general tendency, however, was an overall shift from negative to positive images of the United States. ‘Americanisation’ is one of the theoretical concepts around which this study is framed. However, this thesis adds complexity to this term by showing that Brazilians themselves were active agents in the process of disseminating the (North-)‘American’ model of society in Brazil. Table of contents Introduction - Historiography - Methodology - Sources - Structure Chapter 1: The Brazilian debates on the abolition of slavery in light of the U.S. experience, 1861-1888 - Introduction - Abolitionism as it unfolded in Brazil. Some historical facts and landmarks - First phase of abolitionism: The call for gradualism - The second phase of abolitionism: The popular campaign begins - Conclusion Chapter 2: The U.S. model of political and civil freedoms - Introduction - Federal republicanism as unfolded in Brazil. Some historical facts and landmarks - The place of the United States in Brazil’s historical and historiographical traditions about the organisation of power and government - Three cornerstones of the dynamism of U.S. civil society: An appreciation from Brazil - Conclusion Chapter 3: The United States as a paradigm for Brazilian education: Applied studies versus the established classics - Introduction - The diagnosis: Brazilian images of Brazil through the mirror of the United States - The solution: The U.S. applied and scientific model of education - Conclusion Chapter 4: Steamship lines with the United States. Brazil’s early gravitation towards the orbit of U.S. production - Introduction - Building the channels. The Amazon and the first steamship lines between Brazil and the United State - Consuming the United States - Conclusion Figures: ‘Jornal Norte-Americano’, 14 April 1868, A Vida Fluminense (R. Janeiro), Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro ‘Chegada do paquete City of Rio de Janeiro’, 1 July 1878, Revista Illustrada (R. Janeiro), 3:114, Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro Introduction The concept of ‘modern’ is often assumed to be value-free when it actually is profoundly laden with values and associations derived from the specific historical experiences of certain nations. 1 Therefore, as a historical phenomenon with a time and place, ‘modernity’ has multiple, historical meanings. 2 For most of the nineteenth- century, the Brazilian elites found in the European Enlightenment ‘modernity’ all that they considered best at the time. From political theories, educational policies, literature, fashion in furniture, decoration, clothes and manners, the influences of the British and French civilisations, in particular, provided them with the paradigms of a modern civilisation. Scholarship on Brazil has studied the impact that the economic, political and cultural examples of France and Britain had in nineteenth-century Brazil. Yet, towards the last three decades of the century a new pole of civilisation located in the New World began to emerge. In its course towards economic development and political dominance, the United States began to appear for some members of the Brazilian liberal elites as a new paradigm of modern civilisation and an attractive alternative to its European counterparts. Accordingly, rather than continue looking across the Atlantic towards Britain and France, Brazil’s liberal thinkers of the 1870s began to look increasingly North towards the United States in their search for new social and political models. In 1970 Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre suggested for the first time that the Brazilian elites began to be interested in U.S. society during the critical era of the 1870s when winds of social and political change began to blow in Brazil, thereby 1 Jeffrey D. Needell, ‘History, race and the state in the thought of Oliveira Vianna’, The Hispanic American Historical Review (henceforth, HAHR ), 75:1 (Feb., 1995), 1-30, 2, N. 2. 2 Alan Knight, ‘When was Latin America modern? A historian’s response’, in Nicola Miller and Stephen Hart (eds.), When Was Latin America Modern? (New York & Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 91-117. 1 opening up a new perspective on the field of Brazil’s nineteenth-century history. 3 This trend, as Thomas E. Skidmore argued in 1986, would have most probably been furthered when the Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II travelled for the first time to the United States for the inauguration of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia on 10 May 1876.4 Apart from these and a few further passing references to the emerging space that the United States was beginning to occupy in the imagination of the Brazilian liberal thinkers from the early 1870s onwards, no other study to date, to the best of our knowledge, has comprehensively assessed Brazilian representations of the United States prior to its being seen as a world power at the turn of the nineteenth century. This thesis intends to help to fill this void in the history of ideas in Brazil. What sets this study apart is that it documents the salience of the United States as a source of inspiration for the Brazilian liberals concerned with the modernisation of Brazil’s political and social fabric at a time when the United States was not yet perceived as an imperial power. The thesis thereby challenges the received wisdom that Brazil looked only to Britain and France during the late nineteenth century. Further, it will be shown that the decade of the 1870s marked a turning point in which the images of the United States moved from negative to positive valuations in the eyes of the Brazilian elites. During the first half of the century, Brazilian statesmen and intellectual elites alike tended to express negative appraisals of the United States. The negative image was grounded principally on the fact that prior to the middle of the century U.S. foreign policy was closely associated with an unfriendly diplomacy of territorial annexation. Negative images of the United States on the part of Brazilians, however, began to 3 Gilberto Freyre, Order and Progress: Brazil from Monarchy to Republic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). 4 Thomas E. Skidmore, ‘Brazil's American Illusion: From Dom Pedro II to the Coup of 1964’, Luso- Brazilian Review (henceforth, LBR ), 23:2 (Winter, 1986), 71-84, 73. 2 change in the second half of the century, especially in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. The general picture portrayed by the historiography of nineteenth-century Brazil is still today inclined to overlook the meaningful place that U.S. society had in the Brazilian imagination about a modern society from as early as the 1860s. It is important to highlight that the explorations of the relational positioning of the new independent nations of the Western Hemisphere with respect to both Europe and the United States and the consequent redefinitions of national identity was a regional phenomenon in Latin America. The decade of the 1860s represented a turning point in the political and cultural reorientation of the elites in this broader context as well. By mid-nineteenth century, the political and intellectual elites from Hispanic American independent states like Argentina, Venezuela and Chile were likewise