Why More Brazilians are Calling the US Home

 

Abroad, cuz a new source of inspo in politics and social stuff, in edgy techniques and content, in tech innovations, as well as in the way we consume stuff, started to like, come out from the US, the big power in the West now all about challenging Brazil's usual obsession with Europe. Yet, traditional leaning towards European trends also started getting challenged from within, fam. The new gen of intellectuals and politicians that popped off in the 1870s didn't vibe with the monarchical regime and its commitments, ya feel? The lit political vibes of the old gen were so over and the nation-state was totally consolidated under the powerful symbol of unity embodied in the person of Dom Pedro II.21 In the context of ideological change initiated in the 1860s and, like, maybe even more importantly, as the post-Civil War United States began to flex in the hemisphere, liberal thinkers were like totally over it with how their country was so far behind the United States where society was like doing things in a whole new way.

Historiography, fam

OMG, like, let's talk about how the US was totally not on the radar for 19th-century Brazilian liberal thinkers. They were all about Britain, you know? So, the historiographic section starts by spilling the tea on how Britain influenced Brazil. The 19th-century 'British pre-eminence in Brazil', as called in the early 1930s by one of the first historians to study Britain's involvement in Brazil's trade and diplomacy, started in a transitional era in the history of the Portuguese colony in the Americas.22 OMG, like with the British navy keeping the Portuguese court safe when they came to Rio de Janeiro in March 1808, and then recognizing Brazil's independence in 1822, Brazil totally owed Britain big time. OMG, when the ports opened up in 1808, British merchants were like YOLO and started heading to Brazil. By the 1820s, they had already formed big communities in the lit coastal towns of Brazil. In 1827, Dom Pedro I flexed and renewed a lit commercial treaty signed by Dom João IV on February 1810, where Britain had secured mad preferential treatment as the most favoured nation. OMG, like the treaty was sooo unfair! It, like, gave Britain even lower duties on imported stuff than Portugal. And, get this, it also took away some of Brazil's power by giving British peeps in Brazil extra rights. Ugh, so not cool!

OMG, Leslie Bethell was like, "Yo, in the early 19th century, British merchant houses were totally the main vibe for British business in Latin America."

These houses were like, totally flexin' British textiles and a lit range of consumer goods. The Brits in Brazil also imported some sick capital goods and raw materials, ya know? More importantly, they went all in on shipping, railways, banking, mining, port facilities, and public utilities, all major flexes of modernization linked to their investors. Moreover, the British merchant houses also like totally handled the export of Brazil's primary products, ya know? The super annoying concessions made by the 1827 treaty like totally made Brazil a British protectorate until 1844 when the Brazilian government was like, nah, we're not renewing it.

Alan K. Manchester and Richard Graham were like, total pioneers when it came to studying how Britain was totally slaying the economic and financial game in Brazil. Whereas Manchester was all about flexing Britain's dominance in Brazil's economy and diplomacy from way back to when they were still colonized, Graham went even deeper into the second half of the century with a similar vibe.

Besides the straight up economic vibes of the British in Brazilin life

 the latter study also showed some major aspects of the history of ideas, like how 19th-century British liberalism and its moral values were totally taking over among the Brazilian elites. Plus, it had some interesting deets about how British middle-class lifestyle was being passed on to Brazilian cities. After Graham's lit research, there were a bunch of studies on the British flex on Brazil's economy. The British element among 19th-century Brazilian business elites, for example, has like, been hella studied by Eugene W. Ridings.25 Marshall C. Eakin totally flexed on the field of foreign investment in Brazil with his lit case study of a British gold-mining company doing its thing from the 1830s until the twentieth century in the province of Minas Gerais.Narratives of the British connections across Latin America were like so lit back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, thanks to finance and trade. We're talking about the OG works by James Fred Rippy and the newer studies by Martin Lynn, Alan Knight, and Rory Miller, and a bunch of other cool peeps.27 In the 1950s, there was this new thesis that was like, totally lit about the dynamics of