The Revolt of the Whip by Joseph L. Love (review)

Brazil's 1910 Navy Revolt (Revolta da Chibata) is one of the most spectacular and incongruous events in world history, but it has received little international attention—perhaps because it did not presage a dramatic revolution like the 1905 Potemkin Revolt in Russia. Nevertheless, the mutiny brought the national capital of Rio de Janeiro to a standstill, forcing its citizens momentarily to reconsider their nation's legacy of slavery and racism. Another reason for the negligence about it has been the lack of a concise, synthetic historical analysis in English that Love's graceful study now provides.

Love offers more than a dramatic blow-by-blow narrative of the revolt; he deftly supplies a broader context that renders it newly intelligible. He situates the revolt within the context of the arms race that Brazil conducted with its rival Argentina, and Britain's desire to bolster its industrial economy through the sale of naval technology. He captures the political machinations of Senator Pinheiro Machado, head puppet master of Brazil's Congress, the members of which resoundingly supported the purchase of the pricey, behemoth vessels. He also ponders what Brazilian sailors knew of world events through their travels and training, and how some of them may have come into personal contact with former Potemkin sailors in Buenos Aires in 1908.

Love draws an interesting parallel between the Chibata Revolt, which shook Brazil's political order soon after President Hermes da Fonseca (a career army officer) assumed Brazil's presidency, and the military coup in Portugal that overthrew King Manuel II in 1910. Indeed, while President-elect da Fonseca hosted Manuel II on board one of the two state-of-the-art dreadnaughts that Brazil had just purchased from Britain, Brazilian sailors witnessed a rebellion on a Portuguese navy vessel during the coup in Lisbon (80). After the coup succeeded, da Fonseca hosted the new republican president of Portugal before he and the new vessels departed for Brazil. These events presaged the new Brazilian dreadnaughts' role in roiling da Fonseca's presidency.

After the new ships arrived in Brazil, mostly black and brown noncommissioned led the sailors who revolted after officers brutally flogged a fellow crew member on one of two newly commissioned ships. A few officers lost their lives resisting the mutiny, but the revolt is more remarkable for the overall restraint that the sailors exercised. The two new ships' capabilities far surpassed those of any other vessel in Brazil's navy, and the rebels could easily have bombarded the capital of Rio de Janeiro with impunity, but their new leaders refrained from doing so. The threat they posed, however, ultimately forced President da Fonseca to accept the terms of these humble sailors—which were to end corporal punishment in the navy and provide better food, pay, and conditions of service. The rebel sailors—reformers not revolutionaries—left themselves vulnerable. The government soon reneged on its promises after the sailors surrendered their ships. A number of the rebel sailors who were subsequently jailed died in their cramped, humid cells. A second uprising by another group of imprisoned mutineers led to a violent bombardment of their stockade. The government summarily exiled many of the rebel sailors who survived to the wilds of the Amazon.

The translation of this mutiny as the "Revolt of the Whip" is not entirely accurate. The nautical cord used to flog sailors was called chibata to distinguish it from the açoite or whip commonly used to flog slaves. When the Brazilian army legally flogged soldiers before 1873, they deliberately used the term pranchada (blows from the flat of a sword) instead of whip. These distinctions may seem academic today (for all intents and purposes, they are), but Brazilian military officers in the nineteenth century believed them significant because they distinguished soldiers and sailors from slaves. Nonetheless, the author's choice of words is understandable. The Revolt against Flogging or the Revolt against Corporal Punishment does not have the same...