Amado Luiz Cervo’s work traces the development of nineteenth-century Brazilian foreign policy from a weak position reflected in the unfavorable trade treaties of the 1820s, through a more mature, protectionist phase in the 1840s, to the harmful free-trade policies of the 1860s and 1870s that eroded and finally destroyed the monarchy’s support base in 1889. By using a periodization traditionally related to the strength of the executive, and linking it instead to the role of parliament as shaper and reflector of national sentiment regarding foreign relations, the author makes a significant contribution to Brazilian historiography. He argues convincingly that a parliament united in its determination to protect national interests acquired and retained substantial bargaining power during the empire period, thus promoting a foreign policy that transcended both personalism and party politics.
The debates Cervo chooses to illustrate parliament’s power cover important, but already well-studied, issues: tensions in the River Plate region, problems with Great Britain and the slave trade, projects for European and Asian immigration, and conflicts between proponents of liberal economic policies and those who favored protection. We learn almost nothing, however, about Brazilian policy toward northern and Andean South America, Central America, Mexico, or the United States.
An index would make this work a valuable research resource for studies of the Brazilian parliament and its members in the nineteenth century. Cervo’s argument that party issues were set aside when national interest was at stake could also be substantiated through an index tracking individual responses to the different crises he identifies.
