The take-home midterm is due noon Monday, April 2, 2012.
BACKGROUND
In analyzing the historical significance of the events of 1888-1889, historian Emília Viotti da Costa characterizes the Proclamation of the Republic as a temporary disruption in the larger patterns of continuity of economic relations and elite rule in Brazilian history.
In the essay "The Fall of the Monarchy," Viotti da Costa argues that:
"Although the revolutionaries [associated with the overthrow of the empire] were momentarily united around the republican ideal, profound disagreement among them would surface during the first attempts to organize a new regime. In the first years of the republic, latent contradictions exploded into conflict contributing on several occasions to the instability of the new regime."
"Ultimately, however," she continues "1889 did not mark a significant break in the Brazilian historical process. The urban middle classes and emerging proletariat were not strong enough to undermine the power of the new rural oligarchies during the First Republic [1889-1930]...the coffee planters of the [Paulista] West and their allies, who, once in power, promoted only those institutional changes that were necessarily to satisfy their own needs. November 15 was thus a journée des dupes [figuratively: a day of false hopes] for all the other social groups who had hoped that the republic would represent a break with tradition." [The Brazilian Empire, p. 233]
Viotti da Costa's pessimism notwithstanding, the Proclamation of the Republic might still be associated with certain significant changes in Brazilian history. The Bragança slavocracy, a longstanding pillar of Luso-Brazilian colonial society, had been overthrown, never to return. A vast American empire ruled by a monarchical dynasty was replaced by a republic of "citizens," who were eventually led by elected officials guided by a commitment to the rule of law. Older forms of social stratification based upon place of birth, color, and slave status became, in theory, outside of the law.
As we learn from Amy Chazkel, urban life in the young republic was characterized by new practices of leisure and sociability, innovative uses of public space, and widespread economic risk-taking. Unable to draw upon the authority of an emperor or the arbitrary powers of the slavemaster, the young republican state had to develop entirely new tools to administer, civilize, and police a free citizenry. That citizenry often openly flaunted elite ideals of civilization and order, making republican law into a contested ground of meaning and practice.
ASSIGNMENT
In a close reading of Amy Chazkel's study of the jogo do bicho in republican Rio de Janeiro, present a 1500-word critical response to Viotti da Costa's assertion that the republic turned out to be a "false hope" for urban middle classes and the proletariat.
In your essay, begin with a critical summary of Chazkel's main arguments. From there, develop a critical reading of those arguments and the supporting evidence. Demonstrate, as appropriate, how Viotti da Costa's overarching argument about political instability, the supremacy of elite rule, and the frustrations of popular hopes in the republic played out on the streets, in the police stations, and in the courts of the Brazilian capital between the early days of the Republic through the late 1910s.
HIST
471 Homepage | Email: Professor Williams
Last updated:
Thursday, May 3, 2012 1:23 PM