Political Struggle, Ideology, and State Building: Pernambuco and the Construction of Brazil, 1817–1850 (review)

Jeffrey C. Mosher provides a new, synthetic interpretation of what was likely Brazil’s most quarrelsome province during the so-called cycle of liberal revolts from 1817 to 1850. Pernambucans undertook numerous uprisings, which drew inspiration from ideas and policies that spanned from the left to the right ends of the political spectrum, in the years leading up to and following Brazil’s independence in 1822. The study builds on Marcus J. M. de Carvalho’s Ph.D. dissertation, “Hegemony and Rebellion in Pernambuco, 1821–1835” (1989), by linking events and structures shaped by earlier rebellions to the final, large-scale political rebellion against Brazil’s empire, the Praieira Revolt, which erupted in Pernambuco in 1848. In so doing, Mosher ably uses Pernambucan politics as a case study to examine state building in Brazil during these volatile years. He then fruitfully relates it to broader, ongoing theoretical and historiographical debates on the nature of state building as well as nationalist, nativist, and regional sentiment.

In many ways, Pernambuco is an ideal place to analyze the intricacies and contradictions of state formation in early national Brazil, not only because it was so contentious, but because it was a major province, distant from Rio de Janeiro, that held a powerful influence over its surrounding provinces. It is no accident that many Pernambucan leaders were keen on winning greater autonomy first from Lisbon, and after independence, from Rio de Janeiro. As Mosher shows, Pernambucan liberals and republicans unleashed a number of rebellions from 1817 to 1831, when Dom Pedro I’s abdication permitted a liberal Parliament to implement sweeping reforms. Then, a faction of more conservative sugar planters from Pernambuco’s Escada region resorted to arms to resist this reformism. These leaders emphasized the need to establish order and eventually allied with like-minded politicians in Rio de Janeiro to form a reaction to liberal reforms, the Regresso. These allies took control of Parliament in 1837 under the leadership of the Pernambucan regent Pedro de Araújo Lima. These political conflicts over policy and political power ultimately led to the formation of national Liberal and Conservative Parties in Brazil.

Mosher’s monograph makes an important contribution to ongoing debates about the significance of Brazil’s political parties in state building. He offers a thoughtful critique of interpretations that have reduced political parties to factions whose obsession with winning the spoils of political patronage outweighed questions of ideology or policy. Rather, he argues that Liberals and Conservatives “exhibited important differences in composition, ideology, and willingness to mobilize the middling and lower classes” (p. 253). While Conservatives tended to favor elitist politics, the centralization of political power in Rio de Janeiro, and the participation of the Portuguese-born in Brazil’s economy and institutions, Liberals championed decentralization, economic nationalism, and more inclusive democracy. Mosher highlights one distinctive flash point between Liberals and Conservatives: Lusophobia. Pernambucan Liberals used Lusophobia to mobilize their multi-racial and multi-class supporters to support nationalist economic policies and intimidate the supporters of Conservatives. Mosher might have also emphasized the differences between Conservatives and Liberals in terms of national military policy. Conservatives typically backed the strengthening of the Imperial Army’s capacity and hierarchy, whereas Liberals typically viewed the army as a threat to the autonomy of the provinces and liberty, which they tried to counter with the establishment of a National Guard. This policy distinction, however, is more difficult to discern at the provincial level where, as Mosher observes, multi-racial army troops often took to the streets to promote liberal and republican causes much to the chagrin of more conservative officers. The Imperial Army as an institution, not unlike the Catholic Church at the time, embodied the struggles between diverse visions of how an independent Brazilian polity should be governed and who should be allowed to participate in it.

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