The centennial of Brazil’s republican revolution passed with little notice. The republic’s rapid degeneration into the oligarchic rule of rural coroneis made its birth as much a cause for lament or embarrassment as an event worthy of celebration. Fighting against that general apathy, the two works under discussion here attempt in different ways to reclaim some of the significance of the overthrow of the empire.
José Sebastião Witter is to be congratulated for reissuing in condensed form Campos Porto’s little known but extraordinarily revealing work. A journalist and militant republican partisan, Campos Porto documented the national and international reaction to the advent of the republic in its first month and a half of existence. He collected newspaper articles from all of the provinces and from abroad, government decrees, official and private notices, and telegrams to capture the birth of the new regime. Only about one-fifth of the original 1,010-page work has been reissued, and it concentrates on articles from eight carioca newspapers. Even so, this version provides wonderful insights into the surprise, doubts, hopes, and confusion of the time.
Clearly conveyed is the generalized surprise at the fall of the empire, quickly followed by a rush to adhere to the new regime. While some journalists pay obeisance to the French Revolution, they clearly have Lafayette in mind, not Robespierre. They proclaim “liberty, fraternity, and order.” The paramount concerns are to maintain peace and protect property; all other partisan issues are subordinated. The lack of mass participation in what was essentially a military coup is mostly proclaimed as an eloquent and cherished testimony to the Brazilians’ sensibleness and sense of order, not a condemnation of their apathy. The provincial newspapers display even less awareness and enthusiasm for the new regime. But there are also plenty of journalists here who proclaim the republic’s birth an epoch-making event of global proportions. Witter has set off Campos Porto’s clippings against an introduction from Manoel Oliveira Lima’s “Sete anos no Brasil” published first in 1896 and included in this volume. This overview of the first republican years by a man still in many ways sympathetic to the empire and already saddened by the republic’s failed promise provides an informed and judicious perspective which complements and adds poignancy to the hopes and enthusiasms of some of the articles written earlier in the heat of the republican revolution.
Lúcia Lippi Oliveira also claims special importance for the rise of the republic, though her presentation makes the significance of the new regime less clear. Originally a 1986 Ph.D. dissertation in political science from the University of São Paulo, this work proposes to study “how intellectuals concerned themselves with the themes of nation and nationality during the Republic” (p. 12). Yet the first third of the volume reviews eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European ideas. The rest is a brief, somewhat superficial account of major Brazilian thinkers who have previously received much attention such as Lima Barreto, Eduardo Prado, Alberto Torres, Jackson de Figueiredo, and Alvaro Bomilcar. The method is traditional history of ideas, based largely on secondary sources and snippets culled from various primary works. The volume provides a useful departure point for someone wishing to become acquainted with the general topic, but specialists will find little of interest. Unfortunately the ideological impact of the proclamation of the republic, for which Campos Porto’s collection provides suggestive insights, is not seriously studied.
