The defeat of the Praieira revolt of 1848 in Pernambuco traditionally marks the end of the separatist and republican uprisings that had plagued Brazil since 1832 and also the accession to full power of Emperor Pedro Segundo. The political history of this revolt is now well known, but Amaro Quintas—the leading authority on the Praieira—makes a useful contribution in this monograph by focusing on the social background and the ideological meaning of the revolt (which he prefers to call a “revolution”).
O sentido social da revolução praieira provides considerable information on the economic and political influence of the great terratenientes of Pernambuco, such as the Cavalcanti clan, headed by Francisco do Rêgo Barros, the baron of Boa-Vista. The data on the rural oligarchy are generally not new or surprising, but Quintas makes his best contribution with a highly sympathetic study of the lower classes and their two chief spokesmen, Antônio Borges da Fonseca, the editor and republican, and Antônio Pedro de Figueiredo, a black socialist. The latter is convincingly portrayed “as a true precursor of the social democracy of our own day” (p. 14).
In analyzing the writings of Fonseca and Figueiredo and tracing their roots, the author sees both as having been enormously influenced by French socialist writers and by the French revolution of 1848. Little effort is made, however, to compare the ideology of the Praieira with those of earlier separatist revolts in Brazil, such as the ones in Pernambuco from 1817 to 1824 or the War of the Farrapos in Rio Grande do Sul from 1835 to 1845.
A great deal of research has obviously gone into the preparation of this monograph, although contrary to the statement of Paulo Francis on the dust jacket, most of the sources cited are secondary. Much use is made of traveler’s accounts, newspapers, and other monographs, and one suspects that primary sources have not been thoroughly exploited. Some readers will probably feel that the book contains too many quotations and too much repetition; for example, the very long quotation from Figueiredo given on pages 5-6 is repeated on page 123. But still in all, works dealing with the social history of nineteenth-century Brazil are not very numerous, and Amaro Quintas has made an important contribution.
