José Maria da Silva Paranhos, Baron Rio Branco, was, in the opinion of his contemporaries, the greatest of all Brazilian ministers of foreign relations. Son of the Viscount of Rio Branco, who served as diplomat and prime minister under Pedro II, the Baron assumed control of the Foreign Office in December 1902 after fifteen years abroad as a consul. For the next ten years, until his death in 1912, he was the Foreign Office. Indefatigable, authoritarian, preëminently qualified by experience and long years of reading and research, he ruled Itamaraty by his powerful personality. Avoiding politics, he raised foreign policy above partisan polemics to the point where it reflected the desires of the entire nation. His diplomatic victories, especially in fixing Brazilian boundaries, made him a national hero.
A man of his calibre and personality provides a stimulating and profitable subject for serious research. Much, indeed, has been written about him, as Professor Burns’ excellent bibliographical essay attests. But as he rightly insists, much of it is eulogistic and undiscriminating. The rich body of source material now available in the archives of Brazil and elsewhere has been largely neglected even by scholars. Opportunity reinforces the need for serious monographs on the various aspects of the diplomacy of Rio Branco and his times.
Professor Burns has addressed himself to one of these aspects, namely, the rapprochement between Brazil and the United States. As background for his central theme he devotes an initial chapter to a survey of the first twenty-five years of the Republic, a second chapter to a review of Rio Branco’s life, and a third to commerce as a backdrop for his diplomacy. All three are of necessity cursory in treatment. Thereafter he focuses on the initiation, the execution, and the implications of the new policy whereby Brazil shifted its diplomatic axis from London to Washington.
Professor Burns has searched archives and published documents with the zeal of the Baron himself, and he has reviewed meticulously the secondary material, both good and bad. His narrative is thoroughly substantiated, and his conclusions are drawn from extensive reading, from personal interviews with knowledgeable Brazilians, and from insights which he has developed through long familiarity with the Brazilian scene. One may deplore a tendency to overgeneralize— this reviewer, for instance, would prefer “entente” or “rapprochement” to “alliance” as the theme, and he cannot agree with the glowing optimism of the chapter on “Peace, Progress and Prosperity” —but the merits of the volume far outweigh this by-product of enthusiasm and identification with the Brazilian viewpoint. The essay warrants the careful attention of both scholar and layman.
