The white elite viewed the court as a sort of club for privileged members, independent of political factions. And in a sense, it was true. Members of both parties – the conservatives referred to as saquaremas and the liberals as luzias – came from the same social class, had been educated at Coimbra, had followed careers as doctors or lawyers, had titles and moved in the same circles.43 Although they were divided on the issue of the degree of government centralization, they closed ranks when it came to slavery or the structure of the state. The Brazilian elite of the time could be described as ‘an island of literati in a sea of illiterates’.44 Education was what distinguished them from the rest of the country. The census of 1872 showed that just 16 per cent of the population knew how to read, 23.43 per cent of the men and 13.43 per cent of the women. Among the slave population, illiteracy was 99.9 per cent. Before independence the majority of the country’s elite had studied law at Coimbra. After 1828 there were two colleges for studying law in Brazil: one in São Paulo and the other in Olinda (later transferred to Recife). Even early education was predictable. Wealthier families hired private tutors, who prepared young members of the elite for entry into the lyceums, especially the Colégio Dom Pedro II. The school was founded in 1837 and guaranteed a bacharel in literature, as well as the best chance of getting a place at one of the law colleges. This was followed by a ‘gap year’ in Europe and then entry into one of the country’s two law schools, or two medical schools, which were in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador.45 It was not only legal scholars and lawyers who graduated from the law schools, but future deputies, senators and diplomats: in other words, the entire state civil service.
However, the excessive number of people studying to compete for government jobs encouraged the growth of political patronage among civil servants and in government circles in general. Thus the term bacharel came to have a broader application. In theory the word referred to a graduate in law, but in practice young people with degrees in mathematics or literature – and at times without a degree at all, but with the right contacts – also used the title in order to acquire a desirable post as a government bureaucrat. These people are treated ironically by the renowned legal scholar Silvio Romero46 in his book Doutrina contra doutrina.47 He describes them as always in dress coats, going from door to door looking for a job, preferably a sinecure requiring no personal effort. They were lawyers without clients, doctors without clinics, writers without readers, magistrates with no one to judge, who used their diplomas as a means of gaining social distinction and ensuring a stable income.48
But these bureaucrats were not powerful. Important decisions on national policy were made by members of the Executive and the Legislature, state advisers, ministers, senators and deputies.49 At the top of the pyramid was the Council of State, ‘the brain of the monarchy’. It was first established in 1823, and then abolished during the 1834 reforms. In 1841 it was reinstated as the New Council of State and remained active through the end of the empire. These were the men who were closest to the emperor, with a lifelong mandate, which could, however, be suspended by the monarch for an indefinite period. The ministers represented the Executive, of which the emperor was the titular head; he was therefore at liberty to appoint and dismiss them at will.50 The emperor’s power to intervene, and his power of veto, combined with the sui generis way in which the government was structured, meant that in general the Cabinets were short-lived. Between 1841 and 1861 there were eleven ministries, and between 1861 and 1889, the last year of the empire, a further twenty-three.
Next in the hierarchy of power came the senators. As mentioned above, they were chosen by the emperor from a list of three elected names. A senator was required to be at least forty years old and have a minimum annual income of 800$000 réis.51 The senators had a mandate for life, and hence their power. Some remained in their posts for as long as thirty years. Below the senators came the deputies. They were the ‘most numerous but least powerful group’,52 although the post was an important stepping stone for ascending within the hierarchy. Deputies were required to be at least twenty-five years old and have a minimum annual income of 400$000 réis.
With the combination of his Moderating Power, which gave him the right of veto in various instances, and being surrounded by an elite group from the same social class – even though divided between two parties – Dom Pedro II began increasingly to really ‘govern’ as well as ‘reign’. In the middle of the century it was generally commented that there was nothing more like a saquarema than a luzia in power. The term saquarema referred to the conservatives because it was the name of the home county of one of their leaders, the Viscount of Itaboraí. The term luzia was a reference to the liberals, and was the name of the city of Santa Luzia in Minas Gerais, where they had suffered their worst defeat. The politician Afonso Celso53commented: ‘Liberals and conservatives alternated in power without leaving any trace distinguishing one party from the other. Changes in government were hardly noticed. The driving force behind the political struggle was “Now you leave, because it’s my turn.” ’54 In one of his short stories, the ‘Teoria do medalhão’ (1882),55 Machado de Assis imagines the advice a father might give his son on the vicissitudes of a career in politics: ‘You can belong to any party, liberal or conservative, republican or ultramontanist,56 as long as you don’t associate any specific ideas with these names …’57
But apart from the scandalous similarities, there were a few significant differences. Between the end of the regencies in 1841 and the suppression of the rebellion in Pernambuco that lasted from 1845 until 1848 – known as the movimento praieiro58 – the luzias introduced policies aimed at greater autonomy for the provinces. But the policies were restricted to political discussions and parliamentary debates, with neither party producing an official programme. The names of the two parties were increasingly associated with specific circumstances – for the luzias, military defeat, and for the saquaremas their pressure for more centralized government during the liberal regime of 1844 to 1848. This may be the reason the term saquarema took hold during the imperial period, since it was associated with conservatives in Rio de Janeiro. Saquarema also had negative connotations of political protectionism, or even of looting since the verb saquear may have that meaning in Portuguese. And there were further differences between the two: the Conservative Party was formed by an alliance between government bureaucrats and the country’s leading tradesmen and exporters of agricultural produce, whereas the Liberal Party was mostly composed of urban liberal professionals with links to agriculture in the domestic market and to the newly colonized areas.59
However, in some aspects the proximity between the two parties was such that it caused generalized mockery: of the lack of political programmes, of the art of fawning on the emperor, and of the theatrical display of politics. The members of the Chamber of Deputies were masters at posturing and courting the adulation of the press, which published their speeches – preferably two hours long – full of digressions, quotations and other artifices of oratory. But life for the deputies was also ‘fun’. They left their wives in the provinces so that they could enjoy a ‘bachelor life’ in the capital.60
The fact remains that this temporary reconciliation between the two parties led to the strengthening of the empire and of the emperor himself. The so-called Conciliation Cabinet was created thanks to Honório Carneiro Leão, the Marquis of Paraná,61 with both liberal and conservative members. In practical terms this Cabinet represented a period of political stability not seen since independence. The conciliation united the interests of the elites who controlled the nation’s political life and maintained a centralized structure around the emperor.
During this period Pedro II began to take a decisive role in national culture. In his notes in the margins of his copy of the epic poem Confederação dos Tamoios, especially commissioned by the state in 1856, he scribbled that he had two major tasks: ‘to morally organize the nationality and form an elite’. In constructing a Brazilian culture and unifying i
ts territory, the importance of sponsoring and creating a romantic nationalism was immense. But the challenges were enormous. Most of the population was excluded from the political process, while the country’s image abroad projected a very different reality: a country organized on the European model, with a constitutional monarchy, a young king who was famed as a scholar, an elected Congress and stable political parties. How could he transform the diverse provinces and realities into a nation? How to render a population into a cohesive political community when they were scattered all over the enormous territory, barely united in their loyalty to their provinces, and conditioned by an economy based on slave labour? How could he instil a sense of nationality? The answer, along with developing modernization programmes, was to invest in a ‘tropical culture’ entirely detached from the system of slavery.
AT LAST A PARTICULAR AND ORIGINAL STATE: A TROPICAL MONARCHY
The nineteenth century became known as the ‘era of nationalism’. Nations were imagined through their heroes, their sense of history and their customs.62 The creation of monuments to national culture, the use of national anthems and flags, the celebration of national dishes and traditional costume, all of these were characteristic of the era.63 Romanticism tended to exalt precisely that which was unique to each nation, more so than what they had in common.
In the case of Brazil, things were somewhat different. Romantic nationalism did emerge locally, in relatively small regions that were linguistically and culturally homogeneous. But it was hard to create this type of national sentiment in a country of continental proportions with such a heterogeneous population. The solution was to ignore slavery and idealize the indigenous peoples, who had been systematically killed in the forests and now reappeared in official or semi-official novels and paintings. Representations of this indigenous (and masculine) country created an image of a Brazil that was American as well as monarchical and Portuguese. Whereas in European countries, national romanticism was often a means for one country to assert itself against another, in Brazil romanticism was sumptuous and financed by the monarchy, which led to its conservative nature.64 Thus, although Brazilian nationalism did not reach every corner of the empire, it was historically significant. It allowed the country to form an identity, distinct from that of Lisbon, based on local characteristics – the tropical climate and native inhabitants. At the same time, Brazil maintained cultural ties to the Old World; after all, the country still had the most traditional of monarchies, descended from the Braganças, the Bourbons and the Habsburgs.65
In order to understand the importance of the monarchy in Brazilian romanticism, one must consider the institutions and intellectuals surrounding the emperor. During this time, Pedro II began attending meetings at the Historical and Geographical Institute and the Imperial Academy of Arts. He wanted to form a group of artists and writers – as young as he was. This was the era of Romantic Indianism, of the huge neoclassical paintings from the Imperial Academy of Arts and the exams at the school named after Pedro II. Nature was transformed into both a cultural landscape and an emblem of wealth and progress. In this construction of a national identity, the historian Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen66 contrasted Brazil’s constitutional monarchy with the country’s republican neighbours, which, according to him, were characterized by chronic instability, lack of freedom and civil wars. Before the rest of the world, Brazil wanted to be identified as the only civilized nation in the Americas. But within the country there remained the seemingly irresolvable contradiction of maintaining the Bragança dynasty on a continent filled with republican governments.
This American monarchy was viewed with suspicion by Brazil’s neighbours, making it all the more important to foster culture and memory – an identity that would consolidate the monarchy and a sense of nationhood. In this context, an institute dedicated to Brazilian Letters was founded in 1838: the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro or IHGB (the Brazilian Institute of History and Geography), based on the French Institut Historique, created in Paris in 1834. Intellectuals believed it was important that Brazil had its own cultural institutions, separate from Portugal. The Brazilian version brought together Rio de Janeiro’s economic and literary elite. In the 1840s the IHGB was the meeting place for writers of the Romantic school, and the emperor took a personal interest in its activities, frequently visiting the establishment.
From this time on, the Brazilian Institute of History and Geography became a leading educational establishment, promoting literary research, stimulating intellectual life, and operating as a link between intellectuals and government entities. It was probably the institution that made the greatest contribution to the forging of Brazil’s national identity. The association between the palace and the IHGB became increasingly close: in 1838 Dom Pedro II was invited to be the ‘protector’ of the institute; in 1839 he offered one of the palace rooms for institute meetings; in 1840, on the monarch’s birthday, a medal was minted on which were inscribed the words: Auspice Petro Secundo. Pacifica Scientiae Occupatio; in 1842 the emperor became a member of the French Institute, and lastly, between 1842 and 1844, the monarch introduced prizes for the best work written by a member of the Brazilian Institute of History and Geography.
The members of the Institute were mainly drawn from the court elite. They met on Sundays to debate previously selected topics with intellectuals. Their overriding aim was to construct a national history by selecting carefully chosen events and persons that could be converted into national heroics and heroes. The ties to the government were significant, the institute received three-quarters of the funding from the Crown. Thus through the financing of poets, musicians, painters and scientists, a process began that was not only aimed at strengthening the monarchy and the state but also at building nationhood through cultural unification. This was how Dom Pedro II earned his reputation as a patron of the arts: a ‘wise emperor of the tropics’. Following the example of Louis XIV, Pedro II carefully selected a group of historians to forge a national memory, painters to create an exalted image of the country, and writers to create a national type.
This was a judiciously moderate group. Manuel de Araújo Porto Alegre,67 well known for his activities in the Academia de Belas Artes, the writers Joaquim Norberto de Sousa e Silva,68 Joaquim Manuel de Macedo,69 Gonçalves Dias (1823–1864) and the historian Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen (1816–1878) began to frequent the IHGB in 1840. The Institute’s magazine was ideal for disseminating their ideas. Furthermore, its royal associations guaranteed that its members’ works would be well received. On the other hand, the close relations they had with the government and with Dom Pedro II prevented more radical artists from coming to the fore. It was ironic that at the same time that the indigenous peoples of Brazil were glorified in epic poems describing heroic chiefs and tragic love affairs, politically these native Brazilians were being completely ignored. At the time dictionaries of indigenous languages became best-sellers, and the emperor himself began to study Tupi and Guarani. Meanwhile there was no official policy to protect these groups.
All of this contributed to consolidate the image of a ‘wise emperor’. Dom Pedro II personally financed historical research programmes that delved into Brazilian archives and libraries, and the resulting studies were published at home and abroad. He also took an interest in American ethnography and linguistics. He funded the work of notable scientists such as the German botanist and explorer Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius,70 the great naturalist Peter Wilhelm Lund71 and the mineralogist Claude-Henri Gorceix. He supported a swathe of others – the naturalists Louis Couty72 and Émil August Goeldi,73 the geologists Orville Derby74 and Charles Frederick Hartt,75 the botanist Auguste François Marie Glaziou,76 the linguist and philologist Christian Friedrich Seybold. He also financed professionals in other areas, including lawyers, agronomists, architects, primary and secondary-school teachers, engineers, pharmacists, doctors, military officers, musicians and painters. This private funding was known at the time as ‘grants from the emperor�
� and helped Dom Pedro II to promote his image as a Louis XIV of the tropics. The emperor liked to declare, whether those present were interested or not: ‘La science, c’est moi.’77
THE INDIAN DIES SO THAT THE NATION CAN LIVE78
While historians created a new pantheon of national heroes, it was the novelists and poets who gave life to this ‘new national identity’, again as part of the state’s literary policy. The first great work to demonstrate the ‘national validity of the indigenous theme’79 was the epic poem written in 1856 by Gonçalves de Magalhães, the Confederação dos Tamoios (Tamoyo Confederation). Returning to the theme of the ‘noble savage’, Gonçalves de Magalhães wrote what was the country’s greatest national epic, centred around the courage and sacrifice of the heroic Indians. In an attempt to merge ‘the eccentricities of romanticism with historical research’, the author believed it was possible to overcome regional differences and create a foundational myth of a new national identity.80
Inspired by an 1834 article by Baltasar da Silva Lisboa,81 the poem is a saga of the Tamoyo nation fighting for their freedom against the Portuguese – characterized as barbarous adventurers. Both groups were subdivided. The whites were made up of boorish Portuguese colonizers (who enslaved a free people) and Jesuit priests (whose virtues were linked to the future empire). The Indians in turn were either savage forest dwellers (innocents converted to Catholicism) or indomitable natives living freely amid the glories of nature. In this battle of dualities, the pure are always made noble: the Portuguese of the future empire, who personified national unity and the Christian faith, and the Indians who had not been defiled by civilization. In a significant passage, Tibiriçá, a converted Guaianá Indian, tries to convince his rebel nephew, Jagoanharo, of the advantages of the European world. Thus the poem introduced the trope of the Indian as a noble savage defeated by the emergence of a new empire. Jagoanharo was both hero and victim. Born free, he dies free in the cause of a new freedom. This poem, like other works of the period, forged national unity through the representation of the (noble) Indian, the very Indian who was in fact one of the empire’s greatest victims.
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