This is an interesting book, both for the student of nineteenth-century Brazil and for those whose focus is chiefly on Brazil today. The fact that Brazilian intellectual and political circles at the time of the establishment of the Republic were greatly influenced by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte is well known. Tocary Assis Bastos gives considered attention to how this came about: the influence of Comte’s foremost Brazilian exponent, Benjamin Constant, on his students, the young army officers in the Military School; the dedicated discipleship of the advocates of abolitionism, etc. His book is not a profound study, but it is a useful overall consideration of the importance that positivist theories had in the formation of modern Brazil, reaching down as they did into the first Vargas administration.
The author refers at some length to the influence of Comte’s thought on Irineu Evangelista de Souza, Baron and Viscount Mauá, the great Brazilian entrepreneur and banker of the empire. Undoubtedly, Mauá was convinced of the rightness of the new sociological views, though perhaps he was more influenced by Comte’s predecessor, Saint Simon, than by Comte himself. Also, it was undoubtedly true that in his early years Mauá, who came from Rio Grande do Sul himself, actively supported his fellow gauchos in their unsuccessful rebellion against the imperial government. But perhaps the author of the present study exaggerates Mauá’s subsequent political activities. Only insofar as politics become involved necessarily in his business enterprises can Mauá be said in his later years to have been engaged in real political action, though he was often at loggerheads with the traditionalism and vested interest in the status quo displayed by his contemporaries.
