In discussing the advent of the Republic in Brazil, the tendency is to focus attention on the events in Rio de Janeiro. If this book accomplishes nothing else, it explains why: apparently very little agitation for a republican form of government occurred in the provinces. At any rate such is the impression given by this monograph on the history of republican propaganda in Minas Gerais.
The chief contribution of Minas Gerais to the republican cause in Brazil was the romanticized Inconfidência. Following the suppression of that “revolt of the poets,” according to the author, republican sentiment was dormant. The return of the veterans from Paraguay and the Republican Manifesto of 1870 in Rio de Janeiro briefly awakened enthusiasm for the republican cause among a minority. The highly acclaimed visit of Pedro II to Minas Gerais in 1881 had a decidedly soporific effect on the republican cause for the next five years. Always a minority party in Minas Gerais, the Republicans in 1889 counted only 6,000 adherents. Even these scanty numbers were weakened by divisions within the ranks, centralists vs. federalists, idealists vs. opportunists, etc.
The principal contribution of this monograph is that from its pages one can gather the names of the important republican mineiros, the newspapers which supported the republican cause, and the towns which had some sort of republican club. The bibliography itself fails to mention the newspapers consulted or where and how information of an archival nature was obtained. In general the monograph is inadequate and of only limited value.
