This collection of articles has as its focus the Afro-Brazilian culture of the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil and its linkage to politics during the 19th century and up to today. A group of interdisciplinary and international scholars bring historical and contemporary perspectives to central issues facing Afro-Brazilians: their relationship to the state and the place of Afro-Brazilian culture in the larger Brazilian society. Topics addressed include the relationship between free and freed 19th century Afro-Brazilians and the state, the black militia, the candomble religion, land reform, and contemporary cultural movements.

The essays in this book constitute an analytic survey of the last two centuries of Afro-Bahian history, with a focus squarely on the difficult relationship between Afro- and Euro-Bahia and on the continual Afro-Bahian struggle to create a meaningful culture in an environment either hostile or suffocating in its ability to absorb elements of Afro-Bahian culture.

Press, Power, and Culture in Imperial Brazil introduces recent Brazilian scholarship to English-language readers, providing fresh perspectives on newspaper and periodical culture in the Brazilian empire from 1822 to 1889. Through a multifaceted exploration of the periodical press, contributors to this volume offer new insights into the workings of Brazilian power, culture, and public life. Collectively arguing that newspapers are contested projects rather than stable recordings of daily life, individual chapters demonstrate how the periodical press played a prominent role in creating and contesting hierarchies of race, gender, class, and culture. Contributors challenge traditional views of newspapers and magazines as mechanisms of state- and nation-building. Rather, the scholars in this volume view them as integral to current debates over the nature of Brazil. Including perspectives from Brazil's leading scholars of the periodical press, this volume will be the starting point for future scholarship on print culture for years to come.

In From Sea-Bathing to Beach-Going B. J. Barickman explores how a narrow ocean beachfront neighborhood and the distinctive practice of beach-going invented by its residents in the early twentieth century came to symbolize a city and a nation. Nineteenth-century Cariocas (residents of Rio) ostensibly practiced sea-bathing for its therapeutic benefits, but the bathing platforms near the city center and the rocky bay shore of Flamengo also provided places to see and be seen. Sea-bathing gave way to beach-going and sun-tanning in the new beachfront neighborhood of Copacabana in the 1920s. This study reveals the social and cultural implications of this transformation and highlights the distinctive changes to urban living that took place in the Brazilian capital. Deeply informed by scholarship about race, class, and gender, as well as civilization and modernity, space, the body, and the role of the state in shaping urban development, this work provides a major contribution to the social and cultural history of Rio de Janeiro and to the history of leisure.

Focusing on the military institutions (army, militia, and National Guard) of Bahia, Brazil, this book analyzes the region's transition from Portuguese colony to province of the Brazilian Empire. It examines the social, racial, and cultural dimensions of post-independence state-building in one of the principal slave plantation regions of the Americas. Contrary to those who stress the autonomy of the Brazilian state, this book documents the close connections between the locally-organized armed forces and society in the late colonial period. Racially segregated and mirroring the class hierarchies of the larger society, these military institutions were profoundly transformed by the war for independence in the early 1820s. In its aftermath, the new Brazilian state gradually built a national army, breaking the local orientation of the Bahian regulars by the 1840s. The National Guard, locally-oriented and democratic in its 1831 organization, was turned into a state-controlled corporation in the 1840s. These developments deeply affected the lives of the men (and women) involved in the armed forces, and a main aim of this book is to examine their participation in the complex and convoluted process of state-building. The liberalism used to justify independence and the creation of an imperial state resonated among ordinary soldiers and officers, as it provided an ideology and language with which to challenge important features of late colonial military organization such as racial segregation and corporal punishment. Racial discrimination, formally eliminated in the 1830s, shaped racial politics in the military, while the construction of a national army undermined the previously close connections of officers and soldiers to the mainstream of Bahian society.

Focusing on the military institutions (army, militia, and National Guard) of Bahia, Brazil, this book analyzes the region's transition from Portuguese colony to province of the Brazilian Empire. It examines the social, racial, and cultural dimensions of post-independence state-building in one of the principal slave plantation regions of the Americas.
Contrary to those who stress the autonomy of the Brazilian state, this book documents the close connections between the locally-organized armed forces and society in the late colonial period. Racially segregated and mirroring the class hierarchies of the larger society, these military institutions were profoundly transformed by the war for independence in the early 1820s. In its aftermath, the new Brazilian state gradually built a national army, breaking the local orientation of the Bahian regulars by the 1840s. The National Guard, locally-oriented and democratic in its 1831 organization, was turned into a state-controlled corporation in the 1840s.
These developments deeply affected the lives of the men (and women) involved in the armed forces, and a main aim of this book is to examine their participation in the complex and convoluted process of state-building. The liberalism used to justify independence and the creation of an imperial state resonated among ordinary soldiers and officers, as it provided an ideology and language with which to challenge important features of late colonial military organization such as racial segregation and corporal punishment. Racial discrimination, formally eliminated in the 1830s, shaped racial politics in the military, while the construction of a national army undermined the previously close connections of officers and soldiers to the mainstream of Bahian society.

Official and popular celebrations marked the Brazilian empire's days of national festivity, and these civic rituals were the occasion for often intense debate about the imperial regime. Hendrik Kraay explores the patterns of commemoration in the capital of Rio de Janeiro, the meanings of the principal institutions of the constitutional monarchy established in 1822-24 (which were celebrated on days of national festivity), and the challenges to the imperial regime that took place during the festivities. While officialdom and the narrow elite sought to control civic rituals, the urban lower classes took an active part in them, although their popular festivities were not always welcomed by the elite. "Days of National Festivity" is the first book to provide a systematic analysis of civic ritual in a Latin American country over a long period of time--and in doing so, it offers new perspectives on the Brazilian empire, elite and popular politics, and urban culture.

Since 1824, Bahians have marked independence with a popular festival that contrasts sharply with the official commemoration of Brazil's independence on 7 September. The Dois de Julho (2 July) festival celebrates the day the Portuguese troops were expelled from Salvador in 1823, the culmination of a year-long war that gave independence a radical meaning in Bahia.Bahia's Independence traces the history of the Dois de Julho festival in Salvador, the Brazilian state's capital, from 1824 to 1900. Hendrik Kraay discusses how the festival draws on elements of saints' processions, carnivals, and civic ritual in the use of such distinctive features as the indigenist symbols of independence called the caboclos and the massive procession into the city that re-enacts the patriots' victorious entry in 1823. Providing a social history of celebration, Kraay explains how Bahians of all classes, from slaves to members of the elite, placed their stamp on the festivities and claimed recognition and citizenship through participation. Analyzing debates published in newspapers - about appropriate forms of commemoration and the nature of Bahia's relationship to Brazil - as well as theatrical and poetic representations of the festival, this volume unravels how Dois de Julho celebrations became so integral to Bahia's self-representation and to its politics.The first history of this unique festival's origins, Bahia's Independence reveals how enthusiastic celebrations allowed an active and engaged citizenry to express their identity as both Bahians and Brazilians and to seek to create the nation they desired.

Press, Power, and Culture in Imperial Brazil introduces recent Brazilian scholarship to English-language readers, providing fresh perspectives on newspaper and periodical culture in the Brazilian empire from 1822 to 1889. Through a multifaceted exploration of the periodical press, contributors to this volume offer new insights into the workings of Brazilian power, culture, and public life. Collectively arguing that newspapers are contested projects rather than stable recordings of daily life, individual chapters demonstrate how the periodical press played a prominent role in creating and contesting hierarchies of race, gender, class, and culture. Contributors challenge traditional views of newspapers and magazines as mechanisms of state- and nation-building. Rather, the scholars in this volume view them as integral to current debates over the nature of Brazil. Including perspectives from Brazil's leading scholars of the periodical press, this volume will be the starting point for future scholarship on print culture for years to come.

In From Sea-Bathing to Beach-Going B. J. Barickman explores how a narrow ocean beachfront neighborhood and the distinctive practice of beach-going invented by its residents in the early twentieth century came to symbolize a city and a nation. Nineteenth-century Cariocas (residents of Rio) ostensibly practiced sea-bathing for its therapeutic benefits, but the bathing platforms near the city center and the rocky bay shore of Flamengo also provided places to see and be seen. Sea-bathing gave way to beach-going and sun-tanning in the new beachfront neighborhood of Copacabana in the 1920s. This study reveals the social and cultural implications of this transformation and highlights the distinctive changes to urban living that took place in the Brazilian capital. Deeply informed by scholarship about race, class, and gender, as well as civilization and modernity, space, the body, and the role of the state in shaping urban development, this work provides a major contribution to the social and cultural history of Rio de Janeiro and to the history of leisure.

Negotiating Identities in Modern Latin America explores some of the ways in which people define their membership in groups and their collective identity, as well as some of the challenges to the definition and maintenance of that identity. This interdisciplinary collection of essays, addressing such diverse topics as the history of Brazilian football and the concept of masculinity in the Mexican army, provides new insights into questions of identity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin America. The essays cover a wide range of countries in the region, from Mexico to Argentina, and analyze a variety of identity-bearing groups, from small-scale communities to nations. Hendrik Kraay has gathered contributions from historians and anthropologists. Their individual methodological and theoretical approaches combine to paint a picture of Latin American society that is both complex and compelling. The chapters focus on the day-to-day construction of identity among ordinary people, from American nationals living in Peru to indigenous communities in Argentina. With Contributions By: Gregg Bocketti Maria Eugenia Brockmann Dannenmaier Denise Fay Brown Maria Cecilia Velasco e Cruz Julie Gibbings Louise Guenther Ronald Harpelle Hendrik Kraay Jennifer Manthei Stephen Neufeld Marjorie M. Snipes