The Historiography of Brazil, 1889-1964, Part II Open Access

Part I of this article, published in the previous issue, discussed the ideologies and assumptions which have shaped history writing on the years between the founding of the Republic in 1889 and the coup of 1964. The remainder of Part I was devoted to political history. Part II, which follows, begins with a brief discussion of the study of state and local politics. Longer sections are then devoted to economic history and foreign relations.

State and Local Politics

Most writing on Brazilian political history between 1889 and 1964 has been of the conventional variety which focuses on intra-elite competition for high office. Yet the political realities on the local level often bore little relation to the rhetoric of the Congressional chambers in Rio, especially during the Old Republic.¹ It was a Republican article of faith that Brazil could develop only by dismantling much of the centralized government of the Empire, and returning important power to the states. Thus, for example, the state government of São Paulo, not the federal regime, financed and administered most of the European immigration which poured into Brazil before 1930. Any understanding of the modernizing policies, above all during the Old Republic, must rest on a solid appreciation of events in the major states.²

The label most often used to describe the bossism of back-country local politics is coronelismo. The classic study is the oft-cited work of Victor Nunes Leal, which drew heavily on Congressional debates as a source.³ In fact, the style and content of local politics has varied considerably, as befits a country as vast as Brazil. The social and economic mobility of northern Paraná society since 1930, as described by Willems, bears little resemblance to the far more rigidly stratified society depicted in the careful case study in Pernambuco by M. Auxiliadora Ferraz de Sá. Detailed analysis of local and state power structures in the Northeast during the Old Republic is given in the important work by Ralph della Cava, whose portrait of Padre Cicero includes much on his political career in Ceará. In his liberally documented study of coronelismo in Bahia during the same era, Eul-Soo Pang, like della Cava, goes far toward explaining the links between local and national politics.⁴

Minas Gerais, one of the better-studied states, provides a good example of state politics. A wealth of information on the maneu-verings among mineiro politicians and their state’s role in national politics is offered in Francisco de Assis Barbosa’s biography of Ku-bitschek, as well as in the three-volume biography of Afrânio de Melo Franco by his son, Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, which is also a superb source on the political history of the Republic. Governor João Pinheiro, who had been designated as the official presidential candidate for the 1910 election but died in 1908, was a much-admired administrator with a good grasp of the economic and social problems facing Brazil. His career illustrates the “politics of the governors” at its best.⁵

Carefully documented case studies on single families and political elites in Minas are relatively abundant. What becomes apparent in this rich literature is the relative success of the Minas elite, overwhelmingly agrarian in its economic base, in maintaining consensus on the rules of the political game. Through their political power they promoted their interests by controlling the policies and patronage of government on the state and local level. Although Minas declined in relative economic importance throughout the Old Republic (esp. vis-à-vis São Paulo), its leaders managed to retain significant influence in national politics. Their effectiveness was enhanced by avolding the depth of bitter factionalism which weakened such states as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul. Relative unity meant less federal intervention. In 1930, for example, Minas was the only state to be spared an “Interventor.”⁶

Three U. S. Brazilianists have acknowledged the importance of the regional approach and are currently preparing studies of São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Pernambuco for the period between 1889 and 1937. They have devised a common approach to their study of “The Dynamics of Brazilian Regionalism,” including the gathering of comparable data. This approach has been briefly explained by Joseph L. Love whose earlier study of Rio Grande do Sul was a pioneering work in this direction, with almost half of its coverage on events within the state. Love is writing on São Paulo, John Wirth on Minas Gerais, and Robert Levine on Pernambuco. We may expect their monographs to possess a wealth of information and analysis on the government institutions and policies of these states, as well as on their economic and social history.⁷

Labor and the Left

Scholarly interest in the history of Brazilian labor movements is recent. This neglect has been a natural consequence of the elitist orientation typical among historians both in Brazil and abroad. The most important stimulus given to labor history has come from the São Paulo sociologists, among whom Florestan Fernandes has been a leader. The finest example of their historical research in this area was Sindicato e Estado, by Azis Simão, who explained how labor, having recruited, mobilized and governed itself before state intervention, fundamentally transformed the context of its activities during the 1930’s. The clearest overall account of the growth of the labor union structure is by José Albertino Rodrigues. A convenient survey of the changing phases of primary influence within the labor movement—starting with Anarchism—is given by Leóncio Rodrigues, while the story of governmental regulation is painstakingly related by Evaristo de Moraes Filho.⁸ Until the social scientists recently began their systematic study of labor history, our knowledge was restricted largely to first-hand accounts by militants of the left, such as Joaquim Pimenta, Everardo Dias, Edgar Leuenroth, Hermínio Linhares, and Astrojildo Pereira. Most of these works have also served as valuable sources for recent research and writing.⁹

The literature now available on Brazilian urban labor before 1930 depicts a divided, vulnerable and relatively small sector. Industrialization had not gone outside of a few metropolitan areas and the mass of unemployed or underemployed workers must have undermined worker solidarity. Before they had time to consolidate as independent organizations, the unions became the target of bitter power struggles among Anarchists, Stalinists, Trotskyists and heterodox radicals. During the 1930’s, and especially under the aegis of the semi-corporatist Estado Novo, the Executive branch of the federal government forced labor union activity into a straight-jacket of supervision and control by official organs such as the Labor Courts and the Ministry of Labor. A central task of future research will be to determine the extent to which the success of this governmental pre-emption was due to special features of the Brazilian case, such as: (i) late and limited industrialization (“delayed dependent development”); (ii) the rural background of most urban workers (allegedly carriers of the traditional back country mentality; (iii) the generous rewards for individual leaders who cooperated; or (iv) the effective police repression of independent labor spokesmen.

The “dual society” hypothesis, popularized in Jacques Lambert’s Os dois Brasis, has figured prominently in attempts to answer the foregoing questions. Juarez Bubens Brandão Lopes, for example, has questioned how the rural background of workers who have migrated to urban industrial jobs may influence their attitude toward unionization, and its attendant implications of collective solidarity, militancy, and conflict. The research by Leoncio Martins Rodrigues on worker attitudes at an automobile factory in 1963 is a promising start toward an answer.¹⁰

One of the most striking features of the Brazilian labor movement during the past forty years is the ease with which the national govem-men has been able to control it. During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, however, it appeared that labor might become an independent force. The story for 1954—61 is well told by Timothy F. Harding and for 1961-64 by Kenneth Paul Erickson. The leading Brazilian student of contemporary labor politics is Francisco C. Weffort, who has analyzed the populist tendencies in the post-1945 labor movement. Possibilities for further research on the history of Brazilian labor are extensive, as can be seen from recently published inventories of bibliography and sources.¹¹

Any discussion of labor leads naturally to a consideration of the Brazilian lefts (the plural form is most accurate). Often the lefts have been led by intellectuals or elite-oriented politicians who were conspicuously unwilling or unable to maintain significant contact with any mass based popular movement. Isolation and frustration resulted for such leaders, whose rhetoric was wildly disproportionate to their political power. This fact helps explain why revolutionaries have often been tempted to attempt a putsch of one kind or another, as in the Army barracks in November 1935 or the presidential palace in March 1964.

When the Republic arrived in 1889, Brazil had not known an organized movement on the far left for some decades. Brazil’s nineteenth-century socialists were most active at mid-century, as we learn in Chacon’s informative, if ill-organized survey of Socialist ideas in Brazil.¹² The early Republic saw only sporadic fire from the left, usually linked to Jacobin nationalism. In the first two decades of the twentieth century Anarchism was destined to be the principal political force on the left. The story of its rise and fall in Brazil has been related by several of its leaders, the best-known of whom was Edgar Leuenroth. A bevy of recent works by John W. F. Dulles, Edgar Rodrigues, Sheldon Maram, and Boris Fausto has enriched the bibliography and points toward several conclusions. First, although the urban working class was very small in national terms before 1920, under Anarchist leadership it badly frightened elite politicians, who readily resorted to the tactics of repression. Second, the degree of collective militancy which the Anarchists attempted to harness was never equalled by later popular movements.¹³

In the 1920’s the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) replaced Anarchism as the most important influence on the left. Founded in 1922, the PCB only once (and then only briefly) approached the status of a mass party. That episode occurred in 1945-47 when the federal government permitted a resumption of legal political activity. Through most of its life, the PCB had to operate clandestinely or under cover of non-Communist organizations. The history of the PCB has been analyzed by Ronald Chilcote, whose sympathetic approach did not prevent a critical evaluation of the party’s ideological and organizational record. He finds a heavy influence from the Brazilian “environment,” but even greater influence from Moscow. Chilcote’s admirable monograph has superseded the earlier studies of the PCB, although much insight can still be gained from the relevant chapters in the excellent history of Latin American Communism by Boris Goldenberg, who draws on a profound knowledge of the history of the Communist movement in Europe as well as Latin America.¹⁴

The PCB has experienced frequent purges and has been a constant target of the Trotskyists, who have been influential among intellectuals but seldom among politicians.¹⁵ The most fateful event of the 1930’s was the PCB’s attempt at armed revolt in 1935, which left the party with a violently negative image it has since worked to overcome. My article attempts to fit the PCB-led revolt of 1935 into the context of World Comintern strategy, while Levine emphasizes the radicalized political spectrum within Brazil. After 1945 the party swung between “reformist” and “revolutionary” strategies. The move toward reformism in the final Vargas presidency (1951-54) was followed by PCB efforts at organization within the labor movement in the later 1950’s and early 1960’s. Irreconcilable divisions during the early 1960’s resulted in the creation of splinter parties along Fidelista and Maoist lines, while government suppression after 1964 deepened discord over proper strategy and tactics.¹⁶

The flavor of revolutionary left politics during the Republic can best be gained from the personal accounts of the actors, of whom one of the best-known was the literary critic and Communist intellectual, Astrojildo Pereira. Valuable accounts have also been given by Herminio Linhares, Everardo Dias, Octávio Brandão, Agildo Barata, Ab-guar Bastos, and the famous novelist and former PCB enthusiast, Jorge Amado.¹⁷

Economic History

Few aspects of Republican history have been as fundamentally rewritten in the last decade as economic history.¹⁸ One important factor has been the sharp improvement in data. Reliable time series on such important factors as money supply, prices, exchange rates, and GNP were not readily available until recently. In addition the number of professionally competent economists has increased. Until about fifteen years ago, Brazil was without graduate programs in economics, thus restricting the supply of economists to the small number who studied abroad or were self-taught. The older approach, prevalent until the early 1950’s, has been replaced by an application of the “new economic history” in Brazil, heavily influenced by its earlier triumphs in the United States. Many important studies have appeared recently and are rapidly challenging some long-standing generalizations.

The most important historical survey of the economy under the Republic is the volume covering 1889-1945, co-authored by Annibai Villanova Villela and Wilson Suzigan. The authors drew on the large body of data assembled by the economic history project at the Instituto Brasileiro de Economia of the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, as well as additional data gathered under the auspices of the Instituto de Planejamento Econômico e Social. Villela and Suzigan included many tables, graphs and statistical appendices but unfortunately found it impossible to reconstruct aggregate time series antedating 1920. Pre-1920 data are sectoral only. Their explicit assumptions in analyzing 1889-1945 reflect the influence of present-day policy concerns: how has government policy aided or hindered agricultural diversification and industrial growth? Their data will undoubtedly provide the basis for many new investigations, and thus bring further revisions and additions to the existing literature.¹⁹

The most significant general economic history of Brazil to appear before the development of professional economics faculties and large-scale data collection was Formação econômica do Brasil, by Celso Furtado. A Northeasterner who spent nearly ten years working for the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America, Furtado brought an unusually broad vision to his study of Brazil’s economic past. His use of post-Keynesian economic theory led him to ask the most relevant macroeconomic questions, even where data permitted only speculative answers. Later researchers have often been guided toward revisionist research because of the stimulating manner in which Furtado argued his case. His ongoing analysis of the years after the mid-1950’s can be found in his later works, as well as in his general history which fits the Brazilian case into the context of modern Latin American economic history.²⁰ Another influential general history, written from a Marxist viewpoint, is História económica do Brasil by Caio Prado Júnior, which has been periodically updated. Among foreign works on the Brazilian economy published before 1945, J. F. Normano’s Brazil: A Study of Economic Types (1935) has proved most enduring because of the author’s imaginative analysis of successive cycles.²¹

The history of monetary, fiscal and exchange-rate policies is essential for understanding how any economy has developed. Here again, however, the lack of readily usable data for Brazil posed a serious barrier. The pioneering works by Vieira and Hugon have now been superseded by Villela and Suzigan and by an article of Peláez and Suzigan, suggesting how modern monetary theory can be applied to the study of Brazilian monetary history. Peláez’s monograph on the consequences of orthodox policies between 1889 and 1945 also draws on much of the data which was generated by the economic history project at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Peláez has also authored a paper on long-run monetary behavior, covering 1800-1973. All these works contain extensive references to the contemporary debates on money supply, fiscal management and exchange rate policies. A leading foreign observer, J. P. Wileman, thought in 1896 that a long-run disequilibrium lay behind the fluctuations in Brazil’s foreign exchange rate in the early Republic, and monetary and foreign exchange policies have remained a prime topic of political debate ever since.²² Most of the authors stimulated by that debate accepted orthodox monetary theory and argued vigorously for balanced budgets which they hoped would stabilize the value of Brazil’s currency in the international market.²³

Monetary, fiscal and exchange-rate policies since 1945 have been easier to study because of better data collection and a knowledge of modern economics on the part of both policy makers and critics. The first systematic analysis of Brazil’s post-1945 economy, accompanied by statistical documentation, was given by Werner Baer in his Industrialization and Economic Development in Brazil. Subsequently the Brazilian government greatly improved its statistical services and has retrospectively revised the postwar national income accounts and other time series.²⁴

The history of prices is closely linked to monetary history and can be traced in the works mentioned above. Brazil’s perennial problem with inflation has focused attention on the past record of price instability. A wealth of information, although presented with little consistency and less analytical rigor, is offered by Ónody, whose data goes to 1958. Much more professional studies, essentially of the post-1945 record, are those of Mário Henrique Simonsen and Delfim Netto. Both authors were able to test their theories when they became Finance Ministers in the post-1964 governments. Another economist who analyzed post-war inflation in the publications of a business-oriented group was João Paulo de Almeida Magalhães. A meticulous examination of the connection between inflation and economic development for the 1946-1963 period led Raouf Kahil to conclude that the data for Brazil did not support the structuralist thesis.²⁵ The relationship between prices and living standards is of obvious importance but can only be discovered by patient digging in contemporary sources, especially newspapers.²⁶

Income distribution is acknowledged to be an important index of social welfare, yet the earliest data for Brazil date only from the 1960 census. A comparative study by ECLA has briefly analyzed those data, which form the first observation for Fishlow’s important comparison of the 1960 and 1970 patterns of income distribution, His conclusion, that distribution has become more unequal over the decade, provoked heated replies in Brazil, of which the most systematic was that of Langoni. Obviously income distribution will continue to be closely studied because of its profound political implications, as well as its economic significance.²⁷

The historiography on industrialization has been meager until recently, which is hardly surprising in view of Brazil’s scant industry before 1945. The lack of readily accessible data meant that the early works by Roberto Simonsen and Henry Spiegel could be little more than essays. Stanley Stein’s monograph on the history of the cotton textile industry was a path-breaking study, and has been followed by studies of the capital goods industry by Leff and the steel industry by Baer and Wirth. By the questions they pose and the kind of data they seek, these authors reflect the influence of modern economics, which was largely absent in the descriptive and often anecdotal works such as van Deursen on industrialization and Bastos on steel.²⁸

Fortunately, we now have a burgeoning literature on Brazilian industrialization. A very instructive survey of elite attitudes toward industrialization between 1808 and 1930, especially in debates over tariff policy, may be found in Luz, and, for the era since 1930, in Ianni. These works largely supersede the informative but less systematic approach of Bastos. Dean’s study of São Paulo from 1880 to 1945 raises many interesting questions about the links among agricultural interests, financiers and industrialists, although the author’s methodology shows surprisingly little influence from modern economic analysis. A wealth of new documentation from archival sources has been gleaned by Stanley E. Hilton, whose forthcoming monograph will include extensive discussion of the views on industrialization held by Getúlio Vargas and other leaders. Earlier interpretations of the timing and character of industrial growth, such as Furtado’s general history and Baer’s benchmark study, have been subjected to extensive revision.²⁹ Post-1945 industrialization has been analyzed in a now classic article by Maria da Conceição Tavares. Her analysis became influential in part because it appeared at a moment in the 1960’s when economists were attempting to reassess the exact nature of Brazil’s growth.³⁰

Industrialization in the capitalist world traditionally has required the emergence of an effective entrepreneurial cadre. Economic historians such as Everett Hagen have often pointed to the apparent scarcity of such figures in Latin America as a possible explanation for the lateness of economic development. Fernando Henrique Cardoso studied Brazilian industrial entrepreneurs in the early 1960’s and concluded that they had hardly proved themselves a dynamic, independent force and that they were destined to continue in a role subordinate to foreign-controlled firms if they remained committed to the capitalist model. Cardoso later returned to do a comparative study of industrial elites in Brazil and Argentina, placing them in the context of “associated dependent development.”³¹

In his study of industrialization in São Paulo, Warren Dean argued that Paulista entrepreneurs were timid and inept at promoting their own interests. Perhaps the best-known Paulista figure was Count Matarazzo, who is shown in the monograph by J. Souza Martins to have combined the role of import merchant and industrialist. A later Paulista, Roberto Simonsen (1889-1948), has yet to receive the attention from historians that he deserves. Simonsen was a many-sided man, excelling as banker, industrialist, economic historian and, above all, spokesman for the ambitious cadre of Paulista entrepreneurs who seemed destined to furnish Brazil’s “national bourgeoisie.”³²

Since labor history has been discussed earlier, comment here will concentrate on works which analyze labor supply. Reliable data on employment can be little more than conjecture (based largely on the decennial census) for the pre-1945 era, but Douglas Graham (collaborating with Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda Filho in two cases) has employed ingenious techniques in studying the relationships among migration (both internal and international), urban development, labor supply needs and regional variations in growth. A study which analyzes, inter alia, labor productivity between 1920 and 1969, may be found in Singer. A careful investigation of the demand for labor in the São Paulo coffee economy, which was the principal destination of the heavy immigration between 1885 and 1914 is offered by Holloway, who has used the rich statistical records compiled by the São Paulo state government.³³

The role of government in the economy has been a frequent issue for debate during the Republic. Most historical analyses have concentrated on the extent to which the doctrines of Manchester-style liberalism were challenged by Brazilians courageous enough to advocate heterodox views, often in defense of economic nationalism. No single work attempts an overall survey of the government’s economic role since 1889, although a valuable starting point is the book by Alberto Venâncio Filho, which reflects the lingering influence of the legalistic approach which has long dominated Brazilian research in this area. An excellent survey of the state’s changing role, primarily since 1930, is given in a 1973 article by Baer, et al.³⁴

The concept of systematic state intervention, which underlies the rationale for government planning on the macro-economic scale (affecting both private and public sectors), is largely a post-World War II phenomenon. The issue of planning was bitterly debated in 1943-45, when Roberto Simonsen and Eugenio Gudin were chief spokesmen for the opposing camps. The most complete survey of government planning since 1930 is furnished by Ianni, who gives liberal references to contemporary government publications and discussions of planning (and its application) from academic and political circles. The interesting monograph by Daland, a specialist in public administration, covers the two decades between 1947 and 1967. He analyzes the federal government’s planning activities from the standpoint of their apparent political function and says little about the economic consequences of government action. One of Brazil’s best-known examples of a government engaged in economic planning (“coordination” might be more accurate) was President Kubitschek’s “Target Program” (1956-61), which has been given a perceptive analysis by Celso Lafer.³⁵ A related topic is the history of the public sector. Statistically comparable data are available only back to 1947 and for the single year of 1939.³⁶

Another approach to the study of the government’s economic role focuses on the relationship between political interests and government economic policies, a field now often described as “public policy” analysis. Defined broadly, this might be said to include many of the works cited elsewhere in this section of an economic history, such as the monographs on coffee policy or industrialization. Here mention will be made of only a few of the better-known overall explanations for the political context of economic policy-making. Leff argued that from 1947 to 1964 federal policy-makers were remarkably free of political pressures and operated within an ideological consensus shared by virtually the entire elite. In my study of the same period I laid greater stress on political conflict over policy alternatives, especially in such areas as anti-inflation programs, wage policies, and treatment of foreign capital. A subsequent article included a more general interpretation of the relationship between economic policy making and authoritarian governments in Brazil, comparing the post-1964 military-dominated regimes and the Estado Nôvo (1937-45).³⁷

One of the most original attempts to place post-war Brazilian economic policy making in a coherent ideological and historical framework was by Helio Jaguaribe. It hardly needs adding that Marxists such as Nelson Wemeck Sodré and André Gunder Frank have been engaged in spelling out, as their ideological assumptions would suggest, the exact manner in which certain Brazilian social sectors and foreign imperialists forces have manipulated the mechanisms of government.³⁸

Like other developing countries, Brazil has depended on the foreign sector for technology, capital goods and many finished goods. The best overall survey of foreign trade between 1889 and 1945 is to be found in the relevant sections of the chronologically organized chapters in Villela and Suzigan. Data on exports from Bahia for 1889-1930 are given by Jancso. Wirth and Hilton have studied Brazil’s struggle to maximize her benefits from the trade with the rival powers of the U.S. and Nazi Germany.³⁹ After 1945 the relationship between foreign trade and industrialization assumed increased importance as Brazil expanded her domestic capacity in the attempt to become self-sufficient in items previously imported. The manner in which Brazil’s trade policy influenced her industrial growth (“balanced” or “unbalanced” development?) between 1945 and 1967 is detailed by Bergsman. From 1945 until the mid-1960’s the Brazilian government failed to make any significant efforts at diversifying exports, as recent studies by Fajnzylber and Doellinger have shown.⁴⁰

The total structure of Brazil’s role within the international economy has received much Marxian-oriented writers and scholars. The first (and still influential) study was Caio Prado Júnior, a widely respected scholar whose professional career has twice been disrupted by harrassment from authoritarian Brazilian regimes. A similar Marxian analysis of Brazil’s entire economic history, which also fits the republican era into the story of imperialist penetration, was offered by Nelson Werneck Sodré, an ex-Army officer. Greater detail is furnished in Sodré’s subsequent study of the rise of the “Brazilian bourgeoisie,” although the work is marred by a chaotic organization.⁴¹

Although a subject for endless polemics, the role of private foreign investment has received little documented research. Non-Marxian researchers have conspicuously neglected this area, thus leaving the field to those who often lack training in modern economic analysis and also lack funding to finance expensive programs in data collection and analysis. The available literature includes Rippy’s carefully calculated rates of return on British investments, which were the largest single source of foreign capital until the 1920’s, while economic links are among the bevy of British influences studied by Richard Graham.⁴² Far more has been written on the role played by foreign investment since 1945. The starting point is the ECLA study of foreign investment in Latin America between 1945 and 1962, which includes a useful background section on the preceding century and a half. The radical nationalist attack on foreign investment grew stronger in the decade after the suicide of President Vargas in 1954, but was largely silenced after the overthrow of President Goulart in 1964.⁴³

The management of the foreign debt has been a continuous problem since Dom Pedro I assumed responsibility for the Portuguese crown’s debt to England in return for recognition of Brazilian independence in 1822. The basic reference work is now Bouças, whose coverage unfortunately stops in 1937, when the coup by Vargas facilitated Brazil’s unilateral suspension of payment on the foreign debt. Barrosos angry attack on foreign creditors during that era (1937) reflected the growth of economic nationalism after the Revolution of 1930.⁴⁴

No sector of the Brazilian economy has been more vital than agriculture, both for domestic consumption and for export earnings. The most rehable source of data and interpretation for 1889-1945 is the volume by Villela and Suzigan and the earlier version in Santos, et al. An overall view of the post-1945 period is given by Smith, whose analysis can be supplemented by Nicholls’ study of agriculture during the 1960’s.⁴⁵

One much-studied area of agriculture is coffee. The multi-volume history of coffee by Affonso de E. Taunay was little more than a collection of information, devold of any consistent principle of selection and lacking proper documentation of sources. An early study by Sérgio Milliet stimulated much interest because of the questions it raised and the kind of data collected. A skillful work of “human geography” was done on the march of coffee through São Paulo by Pierre Monbeig, while Stanley J. Stein’s Vassouras focuses on a single Fluminense coffee county between 1850 and 1900, offering a wealth of analysis on such aspects as labor, finance and marketing. Unfortunately Stein’s exemplary study has not yet been emulated for other areas, although Warren Dean is preparing a micro-study of the Paulista município of Rio Claro.⁴⁶

Brazil was one of the first nations to experiment with a scheme to withold commodity stocks from the world market (“valorization”) in order to maintain high prices. Scholars have only recently analyzed these policies with the instruments of modern econometrics. The pioneer was Delfim Netto, whose 1959 study included a brief survey of past coffee policy as background to his analysis of the impact of past government decisions on the international market. A later study, co-authored by Delfim in 1967, concluded that Brazilian coffee policy since 1945 had been too rigid, thus facilitating the entry of rival producers, especially in Africa. Delfim’s research, as well as the dissertation of Edmar Bacha, who analyzed the effect of Brazilian coffee pricing on the world market during the 1951-65 period, were attempts to help contemporary policy makers by explaining the consequences of Brazil’s previous efforts to maximize foreign exchange earnings through controls over the quantity and price of its coffee on the world market.⁴⁷

The most detailed analysis of government coffee policy viewed within the context of Brazilian macro-economic history is by Carlos Peláez, who covered the 1906-1945 period. Differing domestic supply responses are analyzed in Geer’s study of the International Coffee Agreement of 1962, which devotes only sketchy coverage to earlier oligopolistic marketing schemes. Thomas Holloway’s systematic analysis of Brazil’s first coffee support program in 1906-1907 (the “Tau-baté agreement”) has shown that the chief beneficiaries were not the Brazilian growers, but the coffee brokers, overwhelmingly non-Brazilian, and their financial backers.⁴⁸

What of the consequences of coffee stockpiling programs on the Brazilian economy? This question has provoked an extensive polemical literature, with Celso Furtado furnishing the most influential interpretation. He argued that the government’s deficit spending to purchase surplus coffee during the Depression was a fortuitous example of Keynesian-style pump-priming, because it helped maintain demand, thereby stimulating the industrial sector which could be financed by capital being shifted from coffee. Furtado’s thesis has been vigorously contested by Peláez, whose tendentious analysis of the relationship between coffee policy and industrialization is one round in a growing reexamination of the process of industrialization in Brazil.⁴⁹

Among the few other case studies of agriculture are Smith on the commercialization of rice production from 1930 to 1970 and Peláez on cotton. A wealth of data on the sugar industry in the important Northeastern state of Pernambuco from 1840 to 1910 is presented by Eisenberg, who argued that increased capitalization and the shift to free labor did little to reverse the decline in productivity and, therefore, the region’s growing comparative disadvantage in world markets. Surprisingly enough, Brazil has produced few historical studies of land systems. For the Empire there is an excellent survey of land policy by Warren Dean, but we have few comparable studies for the Republic. Helpful background is given by Alberto Passos Guimarães in an essay written from a Marxian viewpoint.⁵⁰

Because of its great importance as a source of energy for modern industry, oil has been a continuous preoccupation of Brazilian governments since the late 1930’s. The polemical literature is vast, especially from economic nationalists. Very useful analyses of oil policy as a case study in Brazilian politics have been provided by Wirth and Cohn and Martins. Strangely enough, there is little analysis of the oil industry from a rigorously economic viewpoint.⁵¹

Before leaving the field of economic history it would be well to take note of three important related topics in social history, an area which does not receive separate treatment in this article. The first topic concerns the messianic movements which frequently aroused government repression during the Old Republic. The most famous was the community led by Antônio Conselheiro, liquidated by federal Army forces at Canudos, in the interior of Bahia, in 1897. That confrontation has been immortalized in Euclydes da Cunha’s Os Sertões, but his caricatured yet influential picture of “fanatics” has been sharply contested by recent scholars. Della Cava saw the Canudos rebels not as “isolated” in the backcountry, but as reacting to pressures from state and federal authorities—financial, political and religious. Much of his argument was based on his research into the career of Padre Cícero, the Cearense priest who rose to become the leading political force in his state. María Isáura Pereira de Queiroz has advanced her own, very different, sociological explanation of Brazilian messianic movements.⁵²

Another messianic conflict, along the contested boundary of Santa Catarina from 1912 to 1916, has been the subject of carefully documented monographs by Maurício Vinhas de Queiroz and Duglas Teixeira Monteiro. An interpretation of the messianic conficts is closely linked to an understanding of the function of violence and banditary on the local level, especially in the Northeast. The social significance of this violence has become the subject of a growing debate. Rui Facó has argued for a class interpretation of the phenomena, an approach most scholars have found to be oversimplified.⁵³

The second topic deserving note in this brief diversion into social history is immigration. Although Brazil received fewer European immigrants than Argentina or the United States, those who came were of great economic and social importance, especially in the south. There is no comprehensive history of Brazilian immigration, even for the Old Republic, although important research has recently become available. The most informative research has concentrated on immigration in limited regions, São Paulo being the most important. Although small in absolute numbers, the Japanese immigrants have been subjected to careful study for their role in São Paulo agriculture and the extent of their mobility within Brazilian society. The fate of important groups of German and North American immigrants has been spelled out in monographs by Jean Roche, Emilio Willems and Frank Goldman.⁵⁴

The final topic of social history to note here is race relations. Slavery and abolition have attracted more scholarly attention than the role of color in determining social relations during the Republic. The pioneer in exploring this subject has been Florestan Fernandes, whose research and teaching furnished the leadership for a profound reexamination of the reality of modern Brazilian race relations. Yet the exact nature of the multi-racial system and its evolution deserve much more in-depth investigation and analysis. The questions are legion. Was the de facto category of “social race,” rather than “physical” race, really predominant? How was it affected by increased European immigration after 1887? What happened to the ex-slaves after manumission, How did the social and economic institutions react to the increase in freedmen? What role did persons of color play in the labor force? To what extent has color continued to determine social and economic mobility? Only with answers to these questions will we begin to understand more satisfactorily the true nature of Brazil’s “racial democracy.”⁵⁵

Many other important topics in social history await serious investigation. The social roles of men and women have recently gained attention, but the professions remain largely unstudied. Although lawyers and medical doctors have played a pivotal role in Brazilian public life, as elsewhere in Latin America, we know surprisingly little about the development and characteristics of those professions. The same is true of military and police officers, whose importance is self-evident. Finally, what of the many social institutions whose economic and political significance have been great? What of the football clubs, religious groups (especially the many varieties of spiritualism), and commercial associations?⁵⁶

Foreign Relations

Only in the last decade has the study of Brazilian foreign relations, at least for the period since 1889, escaped the bounds of relatively uncritical narrative.⁵⁷ The predominant power with which Republican Brazil had to deal was the United States, although Britain retained a larger total investment in Brazil until the 1920’s. An ambitious survey history of U.S.-Brazilian relations since the early nineteenth century has been written from a radical nationalist viewpoint by Moniz Bandeira. His perspective is hardly surprising, since the principal impulse for such studies in Brazil has come from the advocates of Neo-Marxian or strongly nationalist ideas. Bandeira finds U.S. political power employed to promote other private economic interest, both in the form of corporate investors and of consumers of Brazilian exports, an interpretation that will undoubtedly provide a target for contrary interpretations from U.S. researchers.⁵⁸

There can be no doubt that the economic basis of U.S. interest in the young Brazilian Republic grew rapidly. Walter LaFeber has argued that U.S. business interests successfully pressured Washington to help the new Republic withstand the rebellion of 1893-94. E. Bradford Burns found that economic ties furnished a “backdrop for diplomacy” which resulted in a close U.S.-Brazilian alliance during the foreign ministry of Baron Rio-Branco (1902-1912). Thus began Brazil’s pro-American policy which was to bring her into both world wars as a combatant ally of the U.S.⁵⁹ In his analysis of U.S.-Brazilian relations in World War II, Frank McCann has found that the U.S. was intent upon “insuring hegemony over Brazil’s economic and military sectors.” He also provides interesting historical evidence of the concern over the “drift to the left” as discerned by the anti-Vargas conspirators in 1945. The U.S. role in Brazilian development grew even more important in the Cold War era, and has become a major topic for debate among scholars and politicians in both countries.⁶⁰

The “independent foreign policy” pursued during the presidencies of Jânio Quadros and João Goulart (1961-64) constitutes one of the most discussed aspects of Brazilian foreign relations. Most analysts have stressed the connection between foreign policy formulation and the nationalist ideological ferment within domestic politics. Policy toward the rest of the developing world has continued to be a key point of controversy among the political elite, and, therefore, among foreign policy makers. An influential figure in this controversy was San Tiago Dantas, a principal architect of the “independent” policy during his brief term as Foreign Minister.⁶¹

The study of Brazilian relations with other major countries has not been extensive. For Britain there is the wide-ranging work by Richard Graham which analyzes a broad gambit of areas of British influence, such as investment, technology, and ideology, thereby telling us much about the fundamentals of Brazil’s socio-economic change in this important period. As for Germany, recent research has shown that grandiose ideas in Germany about the “conquest” of southern Brazil, presumably working through the German immigrant community, had little chance of success. When the Brazilian government stepped in to “nationalize” her German immigrants (and their descendants) in Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul during the 1930’s, the task of accelerating assimilation proved relatively easy, despite protests from the Hitler regime.⁶²

Modern Brazilian history offers no lack of challenging questions. It is therefore not surprising that the last fifteen years have brought an outpouring of research so extensive as to render obsolete many once-standard works. In areas such as labor history and economic history the time may have come already for new attempts at survey treatments incorporating recent research. In others, such as foreign relations or the role of the military in politics, there are pobably too many important lacunae in the monographic literature.

Increasing access to unpublished sources, both public and private, will continue to make historians impatient with prevailing interpretations, which are all too often framed in terms imposed by the historical actors themselves. Yet new sources will only prove as valuable as the researcher’s methodology makes them. The most important methodological questions depend upon the historians assumptions. Despite the indisputably valuable contribution of foreign scholars, in the end it will be primarily the Brazilians who shape the vision of their past, in response to the realities of the present and their hopes for the future.

Author notes