The Revolt of the Whip has come to cover a gap in English-language publications about Brazilian history. Joseph Love, a Brazilianist emeritus professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana- Champaign, sought to make known to both historians and the general public in North America and England the November – December 1910 Brazilian sailors’ revolt. But his work goes beyond this goal. Based on thorough research in archives and on a careful rereading of the existing scholarship, the text offers original analyses and unveils new sources in an innovative way.
The so- called “revolt of the whip” is both a traditional and contemporary theme in Brazilian historiography. This name has long described an uprising in 1910 of over 2,000 military sailors, most of whom were black and pardo men, demanding both the end of corporal punishment and better working conditions. They wanted to be acknowledged as citizens a little over...