“Atlantic Revolution” or Local Difficulty: Aspects of Revolt in Brazil, 1780–1880

摘要

It has become commonplace to argue that the ideals of the Enlightenment, the American War of Independence and the French Revolution inspired revolutionary struggles on both sides of the Atlantic and even played an increasing role in the inspiration of slave revolts in the Americas. This paper tests this hypothesis against two kinds of upheaval, namely slave revolt in Brazil between 1780 and 1850 and artisan protest in the so-called Praiera Rising in Brazilian Recife in 1848/9, seen by Hobsbawm and others (including some Brazilian historians) as a South American variant of the Parisian upheavals of the same year. The analysis of slave revolts in this paper, on the other hand, concludes that they were rarely inspired by Western discourse, as they were overwhelmingly the work of African slaves, who relied on African — or to be more precise — Afro-Brazilian traditions, including local cults and African Islam. In so far as there was an “Atlantic Revolution” in this case, therefore, it came from the South and not the North Atlantic. In the case of the Praiera the paper further demonstrates that the demands of free and freed Brazilian artisans for “work for all Brazilians” and the “nationalisation of the retail trade” were not inspired by the same kind of radical, anti-merchant ideology as their Parisian counterparts but were primarily driven by hostility to the competition of both slave artisans and an influx of Portuguese craftsmen. This difference it explains by the different meaning of labour in slave and non-slave society.