Focusing on the period from 1840 to 1889, one of the leading historians on Brazil explores the specific ways in which granting protection, official positions, and other favors in exchange for political and personal loyalty worked to benefit the interests of wealthy Brazilians.

Judy Bieber explores the relationship between state centralization and municipal politics in Minas Gerais, Brazil, during the Imperial Period, 1822?89. She charts the nineteenth-century origins of coronelismo, a form of machine politics that linked rural power and patronage at the municipal level to state and federal politics. ø By highlighting the structural role of the municipality within the political system, Bieber provides a key to explaining Brazil?s so-called exceptionalism?its ability to maintain territorial and political cohesion within the framework of a constitutional monarchy instead of fragmenting violently, as did many Spanish republics. ø Despite the maintenance of national unity, political violence characterized much of Brazil?s political history, especially in the municipalities of its frontier regions. Historians have often attributed the chaotic nature of these politics to geographical isolation and decentralization of power. Bieber challenges these assumptions, arguing instead that state centralization was the primary factor contributing to political violence in Brazil?s frontier regions. ø The Brazilian national government centralized appointments of municipal authorities, thereby linking partisan affiliation on the periphery with provincial and national political parties. Local appointees corrupted and abused the mechanisms of social control in order to attain electoral victories for political patrons who had rewarded them with official jobs. This system produced escalating violence and promoted judicial impunity at the municipal level while simultaneously creating political stability at the provincial and federal levels. ø National discourse attributed political violence to a natural tendency possessed by rural elites in the uncivilized backlands. Municipal actors, however, belied prevailing stereotypes of ideological passivity and intellectual backwardness. In the press and in private correspondence they actively sought to define the terms of their political participation, developing their own conceptions of liberalism and ethical norms of political patronage.

This classic work of on the history of 19th-century Brazil now includes a new chapter on women.

This book is the first to describe the role of business interest groups in the development of Brazil during the nineteenth century.

Accompanied by a thorough introduction to Brazil's Machado, Machado's Brazil, these vibrant new translations of eight of Machado de Assis's best-known short stories bring nineteenth-century Brazilian society and culture to life for modern readers.

Accompanied by a thorough introduction to Brazils Machado, Machados Brazil, these vibrant new translations of eight of Machado de Assiss best-known short stories bring Nineteenth-Century Brazilian society and culture to life for modern readers.

In 1874 and 1875, Brazilian peasants in the Northeastern region of Brazil rose up in rebellion, destroying the weights and measures of the new metric system implemented by the government from Rio de Janeiro. The authorities quickly dubbed this the Quebra-Quilos or the 'Break the Scales' uprising. Richardson's analysis of the uprising explores its underlying causes: increased taxes, rising costs of foodstuffs, the forced implementation of this new metric system, fear of being drafted into the military and, finally, the imprisonment of two of the leading bishops in Brazil, known as the Religious Question. Quebra-Quilos and Peasant Resistance explores the complicated, multi-faceted uprising. The book covers the causes and results of an economy gone awry, governmental attempts at modernization, and the inevitable nineteenth-century conflicts over church-state relations.