Dom Pedro

Looks at the life of Dom Pedro, the first emperor of Brazil.

Ideally suited for use in broad, swift-moving surveys of Latin American and Caribbean history, this abridgment of McKnight and Garofalo's Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812 (2009) includes all of the English translations, introductions, and annotation created for that volume.

First published in 1967, This biography of Dom Pedro's reign tells how he met the problems arising from relations with the neighboring South American states, the premature political system of his own country, the struggle between church and state, the abolition of slavery, and the fostering of education. He died in exile after ruling Brazil for nearly fifty years but is ranked among the finest personalities of his time.

This is the biography of one of the most colourful and dashing young monarchs who ever lived. His shortcomings—impulsiveness, quick temper, weakness for women—were offset by his truly generous nature. He became a surprising liberal, the only reigning monarch to defy and outwit Metternich, “the evil genius of the reaction,” and he was at one time offered the thrones of Spain and Greece. With a mad grandmother, a mother whose lovers and political intrigues were a court scandal, and a father who had little time to spare for his upbringing, Dom Pedro grew up in a dislocated family who had fled to the Portuguese colony of Brazil just before Napoleon’s armies overran the mother country. Formally uneducated, but brilliantly informed and acute, he separated the colony from Portugal and moulded it into a new nation, only to run counter to the still rising revolutionary tide and to abdicate his throne. Later he was to lead liberal-republican armies into Portugal itself and to secure the throne for his daughter, Maria da Gloria. This exciting story is told as only an artist in words could tell it, with an accuracy of detail and a wealth of colour and emotion that give the book a unique place among recent biographies. Throughout its pages, Brazilian history is related against a larger background in which England, Austria, Greece, Russia, the United States and Spain played important roles. Samuel Putnam, noted for his brilliant English version of Don Quixote, has translated the book into English.

As the British, French and Spanish Atlantic empires were torn apart in the Age of Revolutions, Portugal steadily pursued reforms to tie its American, African and European territories more closely together. Eventually, after a period of revival and prosperity, the Luso-Brazilian world also succumbed to revolution, which ultimately resulted in Brazil's independence from Portugal. The first of its kind in the English language to examine the Portuguese Atlantic World in the period from 1750 to 1850, this book reveals that despite formal separation, the links and relationships that survived the demise of empire entwined the historical trajectories of Portugal and Brazil even more tightly than before. From constitutionalism to economic policy to the problem of slavery, Portuguese and Brazilian statesmen and political writers laboured under the long shadow of empire as they sought to begin anew and forge stable post-imperial orders on both sides of the Atlantic.

This innovative volume traces Brazil's singular character, exploring both the remarkable richness and cohesion of the national culture and the contradictions and tensions that have developed over time. What shared experiences give its citizens their sense of being Brazilian? What memories bind them together? What metaphors and stereotypes of identity have emerged? Which groups are privileged over others in idealized representations of the nation? The contributors--a multidisciplinary group of U.S. and Brazilian scholars--offer a fresh look at questions that have been asked since the early nineteenth century and that continue to drive nationalist discourse today. Their chapters explore Brazilian identity through an innovative framework that brings in seldom-considered aspects of art, music, and visual images, offering a compelling analysis of how nationalism functions as a social, political, and cultural construction in Latin America. Contributions by: Cristina Antunes, Dain Borges, Val ria Costa e Silva, James Green, Efrain Kristal, Ludwig Lauerhass Jr., Cristina Magaldi, Elizabeth A. Marchant, Jos Mindlin, Carmen Nava, Jos Luis Passos, Robert Stam, and Val ria Torres