Confederate Exodus by Alan P. Marcus

Author:Alan P. Marcus [Marcus, Alan P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036040 History / United States / 19th Century, HIS033000 History / Latin America / South America, SOC015000 Social Science / Human Geography
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press

4

Ideologies of Race, Religion, Politics, and Science

This chapter focuses on the ideologies lurking in the backdrop of the Brazilian migration enterprise. Here I focus on selected individuals, religious leaders, and scientists to show how they contributed to the dissemination of ideologies of the time, influencing Brazilian politicians and intellectuals, and, at the same time, favoring U.S. Southern immigration to Brazil. Moreover, I take a closer look at “race matters” as they relate to nineteenth-century ideologies and, ultimately, to the Confederado story.

At the outset, it is important to understand that the predominant framework that supported the idea of African slavery in the United States was broadly based on the perceived inherent biological inferiority of black populations. Conversely, in Brazil, the predominant notion was based on the idea that slavery was a “necessary evil” to sustain the national economy with. Moreover, the defense of slavery in Brazil did not subscribe to any specifically racist or biological argument, in contrast to the United States; and according to the late Brazilianist Thomas E. Skidmore, “the position of Brazilian supporters of slavery was pragmatic.”1

Brazilian intellectuals and politicians in the mid-nineteenth century paradoxically upheld that slavery was a backward institution and that precisely because of its existence, Brazil lagged behind most of the rest of the world.2 Therefore, these considerations are important to keep in mind later, in order to navigate Brazil’s shifting stance on mid-nineteenth-century ideologies about race, particularly in comparison to U.S. racial ideologies of the same time.

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