Constructing A Nation

Constructing a nation of free laborers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Founding of the republico n november 15, 1889 could not be seen as unrelated to the end of slavery, a systemof labor that had endured for more than three cen- turies and had isolated Brazil from the modern nations of the Western Hemisphere.
But it represented a change many of Brazil’s modernizing elitefelt that the time had come for the “sleeping giant” to assume its rightful place as one of the most impor- tant nations of the world.
The rubber boom gave Brazilians every reason to believe that theircountry was indeed destined for greatness
The enormous profits to be made in the rubber trade had begun to attract merchants and laborers from all over the world in the 1870s to the rubber-producingregions deep in the Amazon.
Conflicting Views of the Republic
A number of organizations and individuals sought a government that paid attention to the good of the entire society, not simply thedesires of a small elite.
Rich and poor, workers and factory owners, urban and rural residents had different, and often opposing, notions of what the new government should be.
The Constitution of 1891The Constitution of 1891 was a compromise document that represented the conflicting views of liberal and conservative elites.
Economic Policy
Conflicts between the interests of planters and emergingurban com- mercial and industrial forces surfaced in the first few years of the repub- lic. Planters whose crop was either no longer in demand, or whose operation had fallen victim to poor soil,mismanagement, bad weather, or an inability to make the transition from slave to free labor turned to the government as they had in the past for assistance.
The early years of the republic were marked bywide disparity between social classes while different sectors expressed a range of per- spectives on the success or failure of the new government.
In each case the participants were poor whites,...