A thorough study of Brazilian politics from 1930 to 1964, this book begins with Getulio Vargas' fifteen-year-rule - the latter part of which was a virtual dictatorship - and traces the following years of economic difficulty and political turbulenece, culminating in the explosive coup d'etat that overthrew the constitutional government of President Joao Goulart and profoundly changes the nature of Brazils' political institutions. The first book by Thomas E. Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 1930 - 1964, immediately became the definitive political history in English and in Portuguese of those turbulent times. It was published by OUP in 1967 in hardcover but it has been out of print in recent years. For this 40th anniversary, James Green, who is Skidmore's literary executive and successor at Brown University, will write a new foreword for the book, placing it in the context of the literature.

The largest and most important country in Latin America, Brazil was the first to succumb to the military coups that struck that region in the 1960s and the early 1970s. In this authoritative study, Thomas E. Skidmore, one of America's leading experts on Latin America and, in particular, on Brazil, offers the first analysis of more than two decades of military rule, from the overthrow of Joao Goulart in 1964, to the return of democratic civilian government in 1985 with the presidency of Jose Sarney.
A sequel to Skidmore's highly acclaimed Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964, this volume explores the military rule in depth. Why did the military depose Goulart? What kind of "economic miracle" did their technocrats fashion? Why did General Costa e Silva's attempts to "humanize the Revolution" fail, only to be followed by the most repressive regime of the period? What led Generals Geisel and Golbery to launch the liberalization that led to abertura? What role did the Brazilian Catholic Church, the most innovative in the Americas, play? How did the military government respond in the early 1980s to galloping inflation and an unpayable foreign debt?
Skidmore concludes by examining the early Sarney presidency and the clues it may offer for the future. Will democratic governments be able to meet the demands of urban workers and landless peasants while maintaining economic growth and international competitiveness? Can Brazil at the same time control inflation and service the largest debt in the developing world? Will its political institutions be able to represent effectively an electorate now three times larger than in 1964? What role will the military play in the future?
In recent years, many Third World nations--Argentina, the Philippines, and Uruguay, among others--have moved from repressive military regimes to democratic civilian governments. Skidmore's study provides insight into the nature of this transition in Brazil and what it may tell about the fate of democracy in the Third World."

Revised for its third edition, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change vividly traces the development of Brazil over the last 500 years.

Published to wide acclaim in 1974, Thomas E. Skidmore's intellectual history of Brazilian racial ideology has become a classic in the field. Available for the first time in paperback, this edition has been updated to include a new preface and bibliography that surveys recent scholarship in the field. "Black into White" is a broad-ranging study of what the leading Brazilian intellectuals thought and propounded about race relations between 1870 and 1930. In an effort to reconcile social realities with the doctrines of scientific racism, the Brazilian ideal of "whitening"--the theory that the Brazilian population was becoming whiter as race mixing continued--was used to justify the recruiting of European immigrants and to falsely claim that Brazil had harmoniously combined a multiracial society of Europeans, Africans, and indigenous peoples.

The interactions between the elites and the lower classes of Latin America are explored from the divergent perspectives of three eminent historians in this volume. The result is a counterbalance of viewpoints on the urban and the rural, the rich and the poor, and the Europeanized and the traditional of Latin America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. E. Bradford Burns advances the view that two cultures were in conflict in nineteenth-century Latin America: that of the modernizing, European-oriented elite, and that of the "common folk" of mixed racial background who lived close to the earth. Thomas E. Skidmore discusses the emerging field of labor history in twentieth-century Latin America, suggesting that the historical roots of today's exacerbated tensions lie in the secular struggle of army against workers that he describes. In the introduction, Richard Graham takes issue with both authors on certain basic premises and points out implications of their essays for the understanding of North American as well as Latin American history.

Revised and updated in this second edition, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change vividly traces the development of Brazil over the last 500 years. Author Thomas E. Skidmore, a preeminent authority on Brazil, provides a lively political and economic narrative while also including relevant details on society and culture. Skidmore's major revision of the colonial chapters begins with the discovery of Brazil by Pedro Alvares Cabral and includes Portugal's remarkable command of the vast country in the face of Spanish, French, and Dutch colonial interests. The text goes on to cover the move of the Portuguese monarchy to Brazil in 1808, the country's independence in 1822, establishment of the Empire within the context of expansion of the coffee trade, the importance of slavery in nineteenth-century Brazil, and the move towards abolition. This second edition offers an unparallelled look at Brazil in the twentieth century, including in-depth coverage of the 1930 revolution and Vargas's rise to power; the ensuing unstable democratic period and the military coups that followed; and the reemergence of democracy in 1985. It concludes with the recent presidency of Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, covering such economic successes as record-setting exports, dramatic foreign debt reduction, and improved income distribution. The second edition features numerous new images and a new bibliographic guide to recent works on Brazilian history for use by both instructors and students.
Informed by the most recent scholarship available, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, Second Edition, explores the country's many blessings--ethnic diversity, racial democracy, a vibrant cultural life, and a wealth of natural resources. It also looks at Brazil's historically severe problems--including political instability, military rule, chronic inflation, and international debt--and its deplorable environmental record. An ideal choice for undergraduate and graduate courses in Latin American history, this eloquent and detailed look at Brazil will be the standard history of the country for years to come.