The Brazilian republic and its discovery of the Americas: The new form of government and Brazil’s shift in identity in the 1890s

Abstract

The following article seeks to identify how Brazil came to be understood in a wider American context in the first decade of the First Brazilian Republic. To do so, it examines how certain Monarchist authors such as Eduardo Prado and Joaquim Nabuco andmore Republican writers such as Rui Barbosa, Manoel de Oliveira Lima, and José Verissimo, viewed Brazil’s role in the Americas in the former’s transition from an empire to a republic. A particular focus is placed on analyzing how Brazilian intellectuals came to move between the US and Latin America as a means of understanding their own identity, mainly grappling with the issue of democratization. Finally, the article reveals how many of their concerns align them with the period’s Hispanic-American intellectuals, reflecting how Brazil faced a series of problems at the end of the nineteenth century comparable to those experienced by the rest of Latin America, particularly in light of the fresh challenge posed by the rise of theUS as a world power.