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Week 7: Trouble in the Empire: Politics and the Paraguayan War

Week 7 powerpoint slides

Also, here are the slides I gave in week 7 this year; the lecture combined the material for weeks 5 and weeks 7:

Combination lecture: Regresso & Paraguay

Seminar Questions

  • Did the Paraguayan War change Brazilian society and politics, or did it just serve to highlight existing tensions and fissures?
  • How significant politically was enslaved participation in the war?
  • What was the relationship between slavery and the military? Did the war change it?

Seminar Reading

  • Skidmore, Brazil, second half of Chapter 3 [e-book @ library]
  • Bethell (ed.), Brazil, Empire & Republic, chapter 3; [e-book @ library]

Further reading on this topic:

Vitor Izeksohn, Slavery and War in the Americas: Race, Citizenship and Statebuilding in the United States and Brazil, 1861-1870. University of Virginia Press, 2014


Peter M Beattie, The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honour, Race and Nation in Brazil, 1864-1945 (Duke University Press, 2001)

Hendrik Kraay, Race, State and Armed Forces in Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790s-1840s (2001) [and edited book on Paraguay with Thomas L Whigham 2004]


Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age eds. Christopher Brown and Philip D Morgan, 2006