A New World with New Ideas - A Brazilian Timeline
- Thread starter CobraFumante
- Start date
Then that reason would need to be stated explicitly to avoid confusion.
That is setting off a huge butterfly in American history, especially related to Reconstruction and race relations in the US.
The 1864 Republican National Convention nominated Lincoln for re-election and Andrew Johnson as his VP in the first week of June 1864 (Lincoln's previous vice-president, Hannibal Hamlin, was considered too radical for them for wanting the immediate and total eradication of slavery and to arm free Blacks). The Battle of Cold Harbor lasted from May 30 to June 12, 1864. The main opposition was George McClellan and George Pendleton for the Democrats. The election was on November 8, 1864. In your story, General Ulysses S. Grant would still be wrapping up the Civil War with his drive to Richmond after Cold Harbor and mopping up operations, and wouldn't be dipping his toes into politics just yet. I do not think there's enough time for the ripples to butterfly away the RNC's nomination of Lincoln for a second term and his subsequent reelection.
Lincoln was skeptical about his own chances at reelection because of the mounting losses and casualties in the Civil War (he was proven wrong by the landslide victory he got). Victory at Cold Harbor and then the resulting final Union victory of the Civil War would remove all of that skepticism. In the time given by this update, I honestly cannot see Lincoln deciding to not run, especially when the Civil War was still not over at the time of the RNC. But you could simply handwave that away with ASB meddling in his mind and meddling with the RNC, making them decide to nominate Grant for some odd out-of-the-blue reason (he wasn't even made the official Commanding General of all the Union Armies yet).
Damn you’re right I’m going to fix it to make it more cohesive, thanks for the advise
I have a question how will we see Manaus and the Amazon develop as a whole once the demand for rubber skyrockets? In OTL Manaus was seen as a 'Paris in the Jungle' but it fell off once the trees from where latex is extracted began being planted in Southeast Asia. In this alternate timeline, could we see a Manaus that is able to expand its economy beyond the rubber trade, and maybe become a pretty important city in modern times and retain the title of the 'Paris of the Tropics'?
Most certainly yes, the governments between the 1930’s till the 70’s will give some special attention to the North of the country as a whole
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Great! I am interested to see that, as I can just imagine someone in this alternate 2022 making a video titled "Why the hell did so many people choose to live in the middle of a jungle?!"
Tying up loose ends
Chapter XXXVIII - Tying up loose ends
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However this whilst this was happening Brazil was also going through some major changes, in 1865 a motion pushed by Eugênio that just passed in both houses called for referendums in the West of Grão-Pará as well as in the south of Mato Grosso to see wether or not both regions were willing to become provinces of their own, this was because both regions were beginning to grow into formidable centers of population and commerce of their own and as such both regions had strong movements for separation from their respective provinces, unsurprisingly this became a hotly debated issue as the governor of Mato Grosso argued that the Federal government could not rip the province apart, however the people in favor of separating from the province argued that refusing to do so would be in contrast with the will of the people, this eventually had to be decided one way or another and who else to interpret the constitution but the Supreme Court itself, in the end the court agreed with the federal government that it was constitutional to do so if the people of the separating area vote to do so, the referendums were eventually held in their respective areas and unsurprisingly separation won allowing for the creation of the provinces of Amazônia and Maracaju with the capitals being São José and Campo Belo respectively[1], another related development would be the province of Paraguay selling some northern lands to the Federal government because of the precarious financial state the local government was in, there lands were then handed over to the new province of Maracaju.
Alongside this in the next year Brazil with the help of Portugal successfully negotiates some border adjustments with Bolivia and Colombia, this was because the lands of Mato Grosso, Maracaju and Amazônia in comparison with the rest of the provinces were very big and scarcely populated resulting in an ill defined border, to help this inspired the government passed the Lei do Sertanismo which was basically a copy of Lincoln’s “Homestead Act”, now you might be asking yourself “but didn’t they already have the Lei do Sertão to accomplish this?” Well yeah but the law was basically moribund at this point as the system of centrally dividing the lands proved to complicated, now all land would be open for settlement all you needed to do was get there and claim it, and this coupled with the population boom Brazil was experiencing allowed for more and more people to settle in the Brazilian interior, such movement became known as “Sertanismo” aka the act of settling in the Sertão.
Photo of a Brazilian settler family in the Province of Goyaz
In 1866 another election presented itself and yet again the Conservatives were able to win the election and as such Eugênio remained as PM, after this defeat the Liberal party’s decadence was only further enhanced, this actually led to the breakdown of the party as the more radical elements left and joined forces with the Partido Progressista and the “conservative” wing of the party became the Partido Federalista Nacional, at the time the conservatives rejoiced at this development as their greatest rivals were shattered, little did they known that from this breakup their biggest rivals would emerge, but for now they celebrated for a dark age was yet to come.
1867 Would also be a fundamental year in the history of Brazilian democracy, for in that year the Lei da Reforma Geral do Voto passed and it basically granted to all Brazilian males over the age of 21 universal suffrage, this law suddenly expanded the voting base to around 25% of the population, this law passed the Conservative dominated houses because it was believed that the Brazilian commoners would vote overwhelmingly for the Conservatives and for now that was true, but soon it would prove to be yet another building block that would kick the Conservatives out of power.
In the following year an interesting thing was about to happen, you see at the time most Latin American countries were ruled with a European descendent elite despite in most cases having a majority Mestizo or Indian population, Bolivia was of course no difference and their elites foresaw that for Bolivia to become a modern nation it would need to be more white, it just so happens that the eastern parts of Bolivia are also very underpopulated and as such had a realistic chance of being snatched by Argentina, as such the Bolivian government began offering lands to Brazilian settlers in the region of Chaco so that they could both whiten the country and populated the Bolivian east, now there was of course the chance that the settlers might become discontent with the Bolivian government and want to separate from the country to join Brazil, but come on the Brazilians did nothing last time so of course they are not going to do anything now right? Anyway in the first couple of year thousands of Brazilians poured into eastern Bolivia and began establishing their communities at first glance things seemed to work out fine but the worst is yet to come for Bolivia.
The rest of Eugênio’s 2nd term didn’t really bring anything of new or unique as Brazil continued to grow and the world continued to flow, all there is to do is sit and wait
[1] the OTL cities of Manaus and Campo Grande respectively
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I wonder if like a reversal of OTL the US would be wondering if it would have been better if they were colonized by the portuguese because ITTL that meant No Slavery for Brazil, No War of Independence because Portugal recognized their autonomy and the one Civil War they had to fight till now was an internal affair(not a direct result of colonial imposed slavery) that was fought against tyrant and succeeded at that
New prospects arise
Chapter XXXIX - New prospects arise
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But all in all the end of the 1860’s were a very calm time in Brazilian history as the country was reaping the benefits of its stable political and economic scenery, for that reasons as well as the increasing Brazilian population (which between 1860 and 1870 grew from 13,3 Million people to 17 Million) the country saw a railway boom as cities became increasingly more connect which allowed for a greater shipping of things which in turn made products from all over the country be at one’s reach, the period also saw the rapid increase of trade relations with the North German Confederation as the Germans quickly became Brazil’s 5th largest trading partners.
The 1870 elections also once again brought a conservative victory however this time Eugênio was not the one to be Prime Ministel instead a man called Teodoro da Fonseca Furtado who was also the ex-governor of Parnahyba, his administration would first and foremost bring the admission of 2 new provinces to the union, the first one would be Gurupy which was to separate from the province of Parnahyba, the other one was Sergipe which was to separate from the province of Alagoas; coincidentally both regions often voted conservative and their admission would se a further 4 senators added all of which were conservatives. The motion was passed in March of 1871, successfully passing both houses and turning it to a full blown referendum which in both occasions passed, thus allowing for the creation of the 2 new provinces.
Also in that same year the Brazilian minister for foreign relations Alberto Féri met with the German Kaiser and Chancellor to congratulate them on the unification of Germany, the meaning pushed German-Brazilian relations even closer as both nations start trading more and more with each other. Another point for foreign relations would be Brazil’s support for Argentina’s claim to Patagonia, the reason being that Brazil sought to establish good relations with the Argentinas whom they saw as a rising power with a good future ahead and one where a lot of money could be made.
1873 however would be a year like no other however, for in that year begins the “Long Depression”, the depression began in Austria as the Viennese stock exchange crash leading to similar things happening all over Europe and later in the Americas, the crisis although beginning in 1873 would only really hit Brazil a year later when the stock exchanges in São Sebastião and Tieté plummeted in face of this crisis, the governmental response to all of this was even worse as there was the believe that coffee could save them, problem being that now that Europe and North America were in crisis the demand for Brazilian coffee plummeted and since Brazil had spent the last decades specifically focusing on its agricultural sector whilst at the same time trying its hardest to sabotage the industrial sector the country entered an unparalleled economic crisis, when the 1874 elections came the conservatives still managed to win however their wide margin had collapsed as they only barely got 50% of the votes, meanwhile parties like the Progressives, the National Federalists and even the Liberal gained a lot of votes.
With the paranoia surrounding a possible defeat Alberto’s second term would be a very dirty one, for during this time corruption started to crown uncontrollably as politicians began to take bribes from farmers to “bail them out”, the public meanwhile was oblivious to what was happening as their currency lost value and the price of everything began to rise, this was also not helped by the fact that the government still was still subsiding the incoming of migrants which only served to lower wages even further, and in 1875 this led to the first Brazilian general strike as over 20,000 textile workers from Tieté made a list of demands to the central government, their response was violent as they sent the military to crack down on protestors, however this did nothing but anger the people even further.
Things looked grim for the Conservative Party, but realz they are about to get a hole lot worse.
The Pandora Box
Chapter XXXX - The Pandora Box
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Meanwhile in Bolivia tensions were beginning to mount between the Brazilian settlers in the Chaco and local Bolivians as both sides more often than not did not like one another, however worse yet for Bolivia was that Brazilians from Amazônia were beginning to settle illegally in the Bolivian province of Acre, the area which until then was very sparsely populated suddenly saw an influx of thousands of Brazilians looking for rubber as well as the so called “Drogas do Sertão”[3], and as these settlers began to trickle in and started outnumbering the Bolivians tensions also rose in Acre, to the Bolivian government however, the tensions generated in the eastern and northern provinces were a necessary evil so that Bolivia could become a “proper” nation, since they thought that as long as the Brazilian government didn’t support any independence movements the settlers wouldn’t revolt and they would soon enough integrate into Bolivian society.
Also beyond the Atlantic the Portuguese became wary of the increased European presence in Africa and we’re worried that their lands in Africa were not properly defended, as such they devised two plans to mend this issue. Firstly they devised a program to increase the incoming Portuguese and Brazilian settlers to Angola and Mozambique, to accomplish that a PR campaign accompanied by the Portuguese Government giving loans to any settler from Brazil and Portugal willing to travel to Africa and if the settler started a family there and lived 10 years in the region the loan was forgiven. The second plan was to connect the two colonies, now the Portuguese already launched missions to explore the interior of the continent since the beginning of the century and as such had ample knowledge of the interior terrain, this coupled with European medicine getting advanced enough to stop Europeans from dying in droves made such plan much more feasible then it seemed, the first attempt to conquer the interior was in 1877 when Portuguese explore Mateus Cristo do Santos (1837-1900) launched an expedition from Angola to found a fort deep in the African hinterland, his mission was success as he founded the city of Adrianópolis[4] in homage to the then Portuguese king Adriano I, further missions were launched and by 1890 Portugal managed to successfully get its pink map.
In 1878 Brazil once again had managed to win, this time however they went below the 50%, winning only 48% of the votes, their opponents however only got 46% of the votes, although in the surface this looked like an ok result for the conservatives, it basically meant for them that their only option were to either turn the tables and reverse their ailing fortunes or accept that they would lose the premiership for a very long time.
“This is bad…” thought Teodoro, “These are our worse results in a long time, if I don’t do anything now the conservatives can say goodbye to power for a long while” as he grabbed his sugary cup of coffee and took a sip from it he lays back and takes a deep breath and thinks to himself.
“maybe I’m exaggerating, maybe things aren’t so grim, maybe if nothing bad happens while I’m in office… maybe we can reverse this trend” his face suddenly gives way for a small smile as he reassures himself that he can do it. Suddenly someone enters the door with a frighting speed, it was Guilherme Brillo one of his ministers his head was dripping with sweat as he ran a lot to deliver some news to his boss “Teodoro, this is worse then we thought the press got a hold on the corruption that has been going on in the government, our shady deals and bribery were exposed, here take a look” as Guilherme said that and he read the newspaper his mind left his body almost immediately and he passed out from the news. The pandora box was finally opened
[1] The OTL city of Nova Friburgo - RJ
[2] The “Veals Accords” named as such because the man who proposed it was the Progressive Party leader Raimundo Nobrega de Velas
[3] Basically a bunch of spices and other addictive things you could find in the Brazilian interior
[4] The OTL town of Lutembo - Angola
Wind of Changes
Chapter XXXXI - Wind of Changes
To say that the Conservative Party’s position was not an enviable one would be an understatement, now that all the corruption from their time in government was exposed things were about to turn a major turn for the worse, for starters now that all other partners were against the Conservatives and the Conservatives didn’t hold a majority in the Lower House passing anything through would be nigh impossible, this was proven when Conservative MP Mateus Saudanho Veloso tried to pass a bill allocating more resources to infrastructure projects in Bandeira the project was shot down almost immediately, but when the Progressive MP Fernando Pessoa Albarde later suggested the exact same thing it easily passed both houses and came into law.
Things turned for the absolute worse however when in 1879 yet another leak to the press came about a corruption scheme from the governors of Grão-Pará and Amazônia creating phantom companies to acquire profits for them and their party, this basically meant that PM Teodoro had no other option but to imprison the two of them severely crippling the Conservative’s grip in the North of the country.
Yet another blunder happened as tensions in Bolivia between Brazilians in the East and the North led to the Bolivian government getting worried that maybe letting them do whatever they wished was a a bad move, as such the Bolivian government tried to exert power over the settlers by levying them higher taxes and stricter laws, this unsurprisingly upset them and as tensions grew as a result however a lack of commitment and an abundance of corruption within the Bolivian government made the implementation of this new rules basically impossible, nevertheless confrontation still came and what made it inevitable was when the Bolivian military was sent to inforce the new laws, this was the final nail in the coffin and the Brazilians in both Acre and the East revolt and created 2 breakaway states, these being the Republic of Acre and the Republic of Chaco respectively, so henceforth chaos would become the order of the day.
Unfortunately for the Brazilians their government in the east neither recognize them nor gave them any sort of military equipment, however thousands of Brazilians crossed the border into the breakaway republics to fight for them as well as give them military equipment, meanwhile in the halls of power there was a lot o bickering about what to do, the Aliança de Velas were all for the recognition of the republics and furthermore supported their incorporation to Brazil, the conservatives meanwhile wished to preserve good diplomatic relations with their Latin American neighbors and as such was against intervention.
By 1880 however the breakaway republics seemed to to be winning as the Bolivians were disorganized and a mix of corruption and neglect had severely weakened their armed forces, however by the end of the year the tides began to turn into Bolivia’s favor as Peru worried about Brazilian expansion entered the war on the side of the Bolivians, this presented a huge problem as the Peruvians were more organized and less incompetent than their southern neighbor, by 1881 most territorial gains made by the Brazilians were lost and to counter Brazilian guerrilla tactics they pioneered a new method of population control, that being the concentration camp[1] which was used to restrict the movement of Brazilians captured by enemy forces, conditions in the camps tough were horrible as disease and lack of food were chronicle issues that result in the deaths of thousands, when these new arrived in Brazil there was an outrage and public opinion of the Conservatives plummeted, to make matters worse PM Teodoro suffered a heart attack and died while in office, now there was the need to choose a new PM and since the Aliança de Velas had the momentum on their side they managed to get just enough support to get Falcão Braga do Porto the new leader of the Liberal Party elected as PM, now with the alliance at the helm things were about to change drastically.
Brazilian settlers in camps
First and foremost Brazil entered the war on the side of the rebels, the Peruvian-Bolivian alliance however were still confident that they could win the war since the Brazilians would take months to mobilize a cohesive fighting force and send it to the frontlines or so they fought. Since Brazil had many experienced commanders who fought in the American Civil War as well as attachés to the German army during the Franco-Prussian war the Brazilians knew well the power of the railroad as such the Brazilian were able to mobilize far faster than what anyone anticipated, worse yet the breakaway republics received a boost of morale and confidence that they just needed to way long enough for the cavalry to arrive.
Once the cavalry did arrive by the beginning of 1882 the tides turned decisively against the Peru-Bolivians as they were pushed back in every front, this culminated in the battle of Santa Cruz de La Sierra[2] where the Brazilians despite outnumbered managed to demolish the enemy forces, now fearing what the Brazilians might do to the exposed Bolivian heartland the Bolivians sued for peace. In the peace negotiations the Bolivians recognize the independence of both republics and Brazil agreed to pay an indemnity of 3,000,000£ to the Bolivian government, shortly after this both the governments of Acre and Chaco voted to be annexed into Brazil increasing the size of the country as well as adding two new provinces, this victory led to a massive boost in popularity for the Aliança de Velas with the Liberals, National Federalists and Progressives winning 38%, 21% and 12% of the votes in the 1882 election respectively, Bolivia meanwhile lost a bunch of territory and had to deal with a massive refugee crisis as Bolivians living in the 2 lost territories fled en mass from there, all in all this was one massive victory for Brazil and a loss for Bolivia.
[1] Just keep in mind concentration camps ≠ extermination camps, so despite the Brazilian being reallocated there they weren’t being gassed or anything like that
[2] the OTL town of same name
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I beleive because of the Andes being a bit of a hurdle, but still it's a shame for big boy Brazil
In comes the new
Chapter XXXXII - In comes the new
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Now that the opposition coalition managed to reconquer the government and the war in Bolivia was decisively won, the coalition under Falcão Braga sought to do some major structural changes, firstly the agricultural focus of the previous conservative governments was abandoned in favor of an industrialist policy, the policies themselves included the raising of tariffs as well as the granting of subsidies to starting industries, this coupled with the end of the Long Depression as well as a surplus of capital thanks to the prices of coffee making a comeback greatly helped in that endevour, as a result the the industrial output of the nation increased by over 60% over the period of 1880-1885 with an average growth rate of 12% per year making it one of the fastest industrial growth rates of the time, this industrial boom would pave the way for the 2nd great industrial boom or as some are beginning to to call it the Long Industrial boom.
To man all those newly built factories labor was needed, thankfully for the industrialist Brazil was a major receptor of European immigrants and specially now that industry was rapidly growing more were about to come, during the 1880’s however the patterns of those immigrants would begin to change, until now the majority of immigrants came from the four nations of the UK (Ireland), Germany, Belgium (Flanders) and Portugal; but now this was beginning to change as immigration from Germany and Ireland declined in both proportion and numbers of newcomers, instead this period would see immigrants from Portugal, Spain and specially Italy greatly expand in both proportion and total numbers, the patterns of emigres within the nations itself was pretty unique, as Brazil received mostly immigrants from the north of Spain and Italy, which was something in starch contrast with the US who received mostly southern Italians and Argentina which received mostly immigrants from southern and central Spain[1].
Another great mark of this rapidly changing Brazil would come in 1885, in that year Romanticism effectively ended as a literary school and was instead replaced by Realism and later Naturalism as both of these schools focused their writings on the social issues of the late 19th century, this was helped by the huge increase in urbanization the country was facing as between 1880-1950 the Brazilian population would go from one that was only 20% urban to one that was over 80% urbanized , there was also the pollution issue as companies would dumb a lot of waste into rivers and even the sea which resulted in diseases spiraling out of control in the rapidly expanding cities, lastly there were the labor issues as the rapidly expanding urban proletariat often had to work under long hours, with horrible safety and hygienic conditions as well as very low wages, then there was issue of both child and female labor which were payed even less then their male counterparts, all in all whilst the era was one of transformation it also had come pretty ugly marks.
However if you were paying attention one issue that hasn’t been really addressed in a long time would be education, now education in Brazil until now had been handled by religious orders such as the Jesuits and the Dominicans who had a long history of teaching in Brazil, however the education they gave was a pretty basic one, usually consisting only about how to write and read and even then a lot of children usually forgot how to do so as they became adults, even so another problem which at first glance seemed not worthwhile but was actually a big deal was the dialect in which such education was to be conducted. When the Marques de Pombal expelled those orders in 1759 he also expelled all the decades of careful integration built between the commoners and the church, and when they return in 1795 the clerics sent to oversee education didn’t spoke the Brazilian dialect (basically take a bit of northern Portuguese accent, mix it with high amounts of Galician and then lightly season it with a bit of Flemish) and once the conservatives were in power the Portuguese taught became the dialect of Lisbon something which left some resentment with more nationalist elements of Brazilian society, but now these same elements were in charge and they had some things to fix, firstly the official form of Portuguese taught in any way was to be the Brazilian dialect, which through the efforts of grammarians such as Herinque Pescado e Sigurdo Toiberde became a single koine dialect, so in 1885 the Lei da Reforma Universal da Educação created the first school curriculum in Brazil, this basically marked something pretty important for Brazil at the time, for it basically stated that where the Old Liberals had failed the new Liberals were to succeed
And all of this was accomplished before the 1886 elections which made Falcão and his buddies extremely popular with the people and so when the elections came it was yet again an easy victory for the Aliança de Velas, however some things are not built to last and the alliance broke down, what happened is simple, the Progressives were getting very radical as the party’s ranks were being bolstered by people with left wing ideologies something both the Liberoas and the z national Federalist disliked and as such when it was time to form a coalition both parties excluded the Progressives which were relegated to a second rate party, this however would have major repercussions down the line.
[1] This is actually a switch from OTL as in real life most Spaniards who came to Brazil were from the South whilst those who went to Argentina were from the North