Tribute of Blood

Beattie Peter M. Beattie

Description

In The Tribute of Blood Peter M. Beattie analyzes the transformation of army recruitment and service in Brazil between 1864 and 1945, using this history of common soldiers to examine nation building and the social history of Latin America's largest nation. Tracing the army's reliance on coercive recruitment to fill its lower ranks, Beattie shows how enlisted service became associated with criminality, perversion, and dishonor, as nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Brazilian officials rounded up the "dishonorable" poor-including petty criminals, vagrants, and "sodomites"-and forced them to serve as soldiers.Beattie looks through sociological, anthropological, and historical lenses to analyze archival sources such as court-martial cases, parliamentary debates, published reports, and the memoirs and correspondence of soldiers and officers. Combining these materials with a colorful array of less traditional sources-such as song lyrics, slang, grammatical evidence, and tattoo analysis-he reveals how the need to reform military recruitment with a conscription lottery became increasingly apparent in the wake of the Paraguayan War of 1865-1870 and again during World War I. Because this crucial reform required more than changing the army's institutional roles and the conditions of service, The Tribute of Blood is ultimately the story of how entrenched conceptions of manhood, honor, race, citizenship, and nation were transformed throughout Brazil.Those interested in social, military, and South American history, state building and national identity, and the sociology of the poor will be enriched by this pathbreaking study.

Sujets

• Histoire
• América del Sur
• 20th century
• South America
• History of the Americas
• Brazil

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 26 septembre 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822381105
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

TheTributeofBlood

A book in the series

Latin America Otherwise

Languages,Empires,Nations

Series editors:

WalterD.Mignolo,DukeUniversity

Irene Silverblatt, Duke University

Sonia Saldívar-Hull, University of California

at Los Angeles

i n b r a z i l, 1864–1945

2001

Durham & London

Peter M. Beattie

a r m y , h o n o r , r a c e , a n d n a t i o n

d u k e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s

The Tribute of Blood

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About the Series

Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nationsis a critical series. It aims to explore the emergence and consequences of concepts used to define ‘‘Latin America’’ while at the same time exploring the broad inter play of political, economic, and cultural practices that have shaped Latin American worlds. Latin America, at the crossroads of competing imperial designs and local responses, has been construed as a geocultural and geopolitical entity since the nineteenth century. This series provides a starting point to redefine Latin America as a configuration of political, linguistic, cultural, and economic intersections that demand a continuous reappraisal of the role of the Americas in history, and of the ongoing process of globalization and the relocation of people and cultures that have characterized Latin America’s experience.Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nationsa forum that confronts established geo is cultural constructions, that rethinks area studies and disciplinary bound aries, that assesses convictions of the academy and of public policy, and that, correspondingly, demands that the practices through which we pro duce knowledge and understanding about and from Latin America be subject to rigorous and critical scrutiny. Colonial administration and the postcolonial nationstate in Latin America followed a di√erent pattern when compared with colonized countries in Asia and Africa. The early decolonization from Spain and Portugal placed most Latin American countries in peculiar positions with emerging imperial powers such as England and France. Latin America’s incipient nationstates, indirectly dependent on these dominant European powers, were in turn shaped by these relations. Peter M. Beattie’s book traces the gloomy picture of eighty years of nationstate formation in Brazil, focusing on military history and race relations. By telling the story of Domingos, the son of an Angolan slave and a Portuguese nobleman, Beattie unravels the conflicting intersections of the army code of honor, the racial prejudices underlying the value system of

postcolonial Brazil, and the constitution of its civil society. In the forming Brazilian State, ‘‘whiteness’’ was associated with honor, prestige, and wealth. However, in the international order of the period under study, the distinction between Anglo and Latin whites was being made, as ‘‘white ness’’ in Brazil was not the same as ‘‘whiteness’’ in the United States. This superb study of the relationships between honor, race, and the army in Brazil also o√ers a wealth of information and ideas on the configuration of racial prejudices in Latin countries during the second half of the nine teenth and the first half of the twentieth century.

about the series vi

Tomymother,

Jean O’Connor Beattie

Tothememoriesofmyfather,

Francis Martin Beattie

Andmysister,

Natalie Childress Beattie

Mantothehills,womantotheshore.

—Gaelic proverb

Cuchulain stirred,

Starred on the horses of the sea, and heard

Thecarsofbattleandhisownnamecried;

And fought with the invulnerable tide.

—W. B. Yeats, ‘‘Cuchulain’s Fight with the Sea’’

Ishoulderedakindofmanhood

Stepping in to lift the co≈ns

of dead relations.

—SeamusHeaney,‘‘FuneralRites’’