Aperfeiçoar or criar: Dilemmas of Brazilian modernization, 1850-1889

This project examines Brazilian debates and projects of modernization during the Second Empire. To date, no such study has been undertaken; the majority of works that treat this subject center on European and North American influences, or on strictly economic components of modernization. By contrast, this project recovers an endogenous discourse, relying on government reports, government-sponsored journals, and manuscripts for a view of the "official" discourse on modernization, while letters to the editor, illustrations and advertisements, and caricatures provide insight into "public" responses. The first chapter locates and analyzes a Brazilian vocabulary of modernization; a key term was aperfeiçoar meaning "to improve or perfect." Aperfeiçoar conveyed an Enlightenment sensibility, and best captured the cautious approach of elite Brazilians towards modernization; they wanted the improvements of the modern age, but without the revolutionary consequences that often resulted from technological and social change. The challenges of building and improving the transportation network in the challenging topography and climatic conditions of this tropical nation comprise chapter two. On this topic, government officials and members of the public agreed: the deplorable state of transportation networks required immediate remedy. A discussion of the supporting technologies that developed, or failed to develop, around the transportation sector is included. Subsequent chapters examine efforts to develop native forest resources in support of domestic and international industrial production, and the parallel need to reform Brazilian agriculture. It was hoped that mechanized agricultural production would reduce the presence of slave laborers on plantations and farms in addition to ending slash-and-burn agriculture. This last practice was blamed for environmental and social problems, including the devaluation of land after its initial fertility was exhausted. An examination of Brazilian agricultural technology completes this chapter. The final chapter turns to the public sphere for responses to the arrival of Brazil's first railways, street trolleys, and factories. Conflicts between workers and passengers revealed social and class tensions. These interactions enliven the transformations then unfolding in Brazil, and offer a distinctly human voice to counter and complement more statistically derived economic analyses.