Slavery and War in the Americas: Race, Citizenship, and State Building in the United States and Brazil, 1861-1870

ONEMilitary Traditions ConfrontMass Mobilization in the United Statesand Brazil

7 In Brazil and the United States, popular distrust of a professional military took root and grew from the late colonial period to the 1860s. Both societies developed suspicion, resentment, or opposition to national armies and favored local military units commanded by local officers. British North Americans and Luso-Brazilians both organized locally controlled military institutions during the late colonial period and after independence. Comparing connections between the development of different levels of administration in each empire and the distinct social responses to those innovations provides a brief introduction to the social and constitutional problems that limited the expansion of national armies in the mid-nineteenth century, and that so effectively obstructed the two countries’ war efforts in the 1860s. Several questions emerge: What was the status of civilian-military relations in each colonial dominion? Were antimilitary attitudes among British and Portuguese Americans similar? How did such attitudes adapt to the transition from Imperial rule to independence? The diversity of regions that formed these large empires is an important consideration. British and Portuguese America consisted of mosaics of collectivities weakly connected to each other. Regional variations in demographic patterns and social structures make it difficult to generalize, yet, despite, or perhaps because of, this enormous diversity, in both North America and Brazil the center did not hold, at least not when it came to war or the provision for war. In these colonial arenas, military activities involved less centralization and less accumulation of coercive powers by cenONE Military Traditions Confront Mass Mobilization in the United States and Brazil Slavery and War in the Americas 8 tral authorities than occurred in Europe’s absolutist monarchies, where, in Charles Tilly’s formulation, “War wove the European network of national states, and preparation for war created the internal structures of the states within it.”1 In contrast to European efforts to establish direct government through the creation of strong central bureaucracies, cooperation between royal agents and locals was the norm for colonial and national defense in both Portuguese and British North American settings. Such cooperation resulted in small professional armies and heavy imperial dependence for colonial security on unspecialized auxiliary forces such as militias, armed bands, and National Guards. But parallels can be deceptive. Despite similarities in indirect government and the decentralized character of military mobilization, the steps taken toward this balance of authority were not identical. Each colony achieved cooperation at the local level from different entities in different ways. Luso-Brazilian and British–North American colonists established patterns of military organization that differed from each other, just as they diverged from the European paths of militarization. Deficiencies in the professional military capacity made each imperial power heavily dependent on the assistance of private locally raised and led militia companies to reinforce public authority as well as maintain external defense and internal order. These groups transmitted commands and regulated both colonial and national policies through complex bargaining that connected the interests of local communities to the prerogatives of royal agents. When faced with inevitable wartime demand for men and resources, each society responded in ways that were intertwined with customary patterns of justice and primary collective identities. The most delicate aspect of colonial militarization was the transfer of men from the auxiliaries to permanent army units. To be moved into the professional army brought the risk of fighting in distant places under the command of strangers. The transfer of local troops to frontline combat units constituted one of the main problems faced by all colonial officials involved in the administration of war and defense. Examining the rules and circumstances of such transfers allows a broader understanding of the impact of war on colonial ways of life, as well as on changing perceptions of military obligations, political rights, and patriotism. The negotiations among different levels of authority undertaken to transfer local soldiers to permanent army units and the claims generated among local bosses and their constituents, preserved in Military Traditions Confront Mass Mobilization 9 government records, reveal how ordinary people understood their rights and obligations vis-à-vis the central authority of the state and their local communities. Such collaboration was particularly intense in the thirteen British colonies during the last decades of imperial rule. This contrasts with normal conditions prevailing in Portuguese America, where only those who wanted to escape hunger and poverty, or expected to obtain freedom from servitude, were willing to serve far from home for extended periods of...