The collapse of the Portuguese empire in the Americas in the early nineteenth century did not immediately or easily translate into the formation of the independent nation-state of Brazil. While “Brazil” had geographic meaning, it did not constitute a cohesive political identity that could draw on basic loyalties. The tumultuous struggle to nationhood in Brazil was marked by the interplay of differing social groups, political parties, and regions. A series of violent revolts in Pernambuco, a large slaveholding, sugar-producing province in northeastern Brazil, exposed the tensions accompanying state and nation building. Political Struggle, Ideology, and State Building delves into the complex and engaging history of the contested province of Pernambuco, providing better understanding of the interplay between local and provincial social and political struggles and the construction of the nation-state.

 

Jeffrey C. Mosher reevaluates political parties, institutions long assumed to be mere facades for elite factions with identical interests. He demonstrates the importance of both formal political institutions and ideology, as well as the efforts of the lower classes to assert their own visions and values. Resentment of the Portuguese provided common ground for some elite factions and lower-class groups and figured importantly in defining the nation. Mosher’s analysis clarifies how the lower class’s assertiveness—in a society sharply divided by slavery, race, and class—frightened various elite groups into embracing both exclusionary discourses on race and the need for authoritarian, centralized political institutions, a development that proved to be an enduring legacy of the period.

Jeffrey C. Mosher is an associate professor of history at Texas Tech University.

"Mosher has produced an important study that bridges several historiographical traditions and is the first solid study in English of this very important period in Pernambucan and Brazilian history. It will remain an important work and a starting point for many new strands of research into the contested years of early state formation in Brazil."—James E. Wadsworth, Ethnohistory

"The study successfully contributes to the growing understanding of Brazil's imperial political structure."—J. M. Rosenthal, CHOICE

"Political Struggle is a welcome addition to our understanding of the first decades of the Brazilian Empire and it should have a broad appeal to scholars and students alike."—Peter M. Beattie, The Americas

"Jeffrey Mosher has succeeded in producing an important book that will become a touchstone for historiographical debates for years to come."—Gabriel Paquette, Hispanic American Historical Review

"Mosher's study broadens a rich and varied Pernambucan historiography and his inclusion of heretofore unavailable archival materials brings new insights into local/state relationships."—Nancy Priscilla Naro, Bulletin of Latin American Research

"Mosher provides what is surely the most meticulous political history of the province in this period available in any language, and certainly the only one in English."—Richard Graham, American Historical Review