Celso Thomas Castilho

Industrial Forests and Mechanical Marvels: Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Brazil by Teresa Cribelli (review)

In this innovative study of modernization and technological change in nineteenthcentury Brazil, Teresa Cribelli breaks new ground in demonstrating the extent to which Brazilians shaped the terms and impacts of these multifaceted processes. Indeed, her book furnishes a broad and much-needed cultural interpretation of the histories of science, industry, and technology in Brazil. She establishes at the outset that nation-building and scientific innovation went hand in hand; that Brazilian engineers, industrialists, and coffee planters moved international discussions forward on topics ranging from patents to agricultural machinery to railroad building; and that these reckonings with modernization played out quite publicly, also bearing on the interactions between newspapers, associations, and the state. In connecting the histories of science and technology to the histories of the Brazilian press and public life, Cribelli is in effect expanding our understanding of a topic—modernization—that has most often been considered through the prism of political economy, focusing on debates about either the material impact of such developments, or on the nature of the imperatives, whether external or internal, that drove the process.

Performing Abolitionism, Enacting Citizenship: The Social Construction of Political Rights in 1880s Recife, Brazil

Este artigo visa realcar a centralidade das performances teatrais e carnavalescas acerca do movimento abolicionista brasileiro. Baseado em um estudo de caso de Recife, argumentamos que estas manifestacoes culturais eram parte integrante da ampla politizacao mediante ao problema da emancipacao e da construcao publica abolicionista. Importante nao so na consolidacao do apoio popular, as performances abolicionistas tambem criaram novos codigos para a expressao politica e reformularam os termos do pertencimento as esferas da politica e da cidadania. Na esteira da ampla restricao imposta pela lei eleitoral de 1888, as performances retratavam a abolicao como uma questao nacional e, portanto, legitimando a possibilidade de intervencao coletiva. A consolidacao do movimento abolicionista transformou o funcionamento das politicas locais sobre a escravidao, forcando os governos provinciais e municipais a um importante confronto pela adocao dos fundos de emancipacao. As performances abolicionistas alargaram os parâmetros da participacao politica. Elas desafiaram a instituicao escravista, mas mantiveram intactos os pressupostos culturais sobre as diferencas raciais e as hierarquias. Tais performances, dinâmicas e complexas, tornaram-se veiculo crucial para estimular a mobilizacao politica popular nos anos de 1880, tornando-se pratica que repercutiu nacionalmente.

Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (review)

household and their families, not as a territorial unit. The failure of some reducciones and preferences for a scattered settlement pattern explain why later priests continued to argue over jurisdictions. Ramos, nevertheless, territorializes the parish, writing of districts and provinces. This helps explain why identification with parishes (as opposed to the ayllus, or lineages) in the viceregal capital was slow and uneven (for example, p. 130).

The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade (review)

It is in these fi nal chapters that Biard comes alive as a character featured in his own art. His presence as subject matter—self-portraits pepper his work— gives credence to Araújo’s major thesis in which she defi nes Biard as an artist who embodies multiple roles. Moving beyond the role of draughtsman, she states, he also saw himself as adventurer, naturalist and ethnographer. It is no wonder that “adventure” is a prominent word in Araújo’s title. According to Araújo, especially as a mature artist, Biard was able to express a freer, more personalized view of Brazil than artists who were allied with the Crown and part of an offi cial artistic mission, such as Debret. Biard was thus at liberty to insert his own personal views—and biases—into his oeuvre, by way of a style expressed through exaggerated humor and mockery, bordering on caricature. In his prints, Biard was oft en depicted as a hero (242) in relationship to his non-idealized—even demonized—indigenous models, a contrast that underscored the sharp delineation between civilized individual versus savage. For Biard, then, operating within the paradigms of the tropical romanticism Araújo brings to light, the civilized individual (represented by the artist himself as protagonist and hero in his prints) would continue to maintain a superior status over the native savages, as Brazil would remain the exotic “other,” lasting object of European fascination. Ana Lúcia Araújo’s Romantisme Tropical fi ttingly concludes with a substantial list of bibliographical sources and a useful list of illustrations. Th e illustrations themselves, well distributed throughout the chapters, are boldly printed and better proportioned than those in Lima’s volume. In sum, anyone wishing to gain considerable insight and knowledge into the cultural and artistic history of nineteenth-century Brazil, as well as detailed knowledge of two fascinating individuals who made Brazil the subject of their art will no doubt choose to include these two volumes within his or her personal holdings.