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.

Chapter 1. Messages Sent, Messages Received?: The Papacy and the Latin American Church at the Turn of the Twentieth Century - Lisa M. Edwards -- Chapter 2. Catholic Vanguards in Brazil - Dain Borges -- Chapter 3. Eucharistic Angels: Mexico's Nocturnal Adoration and the Masculinization of Postrevolutionary Catholicism, 1910-1930 - Matthew Butler -- Chapter 4. Transnational Subaltern Voices: Sexual Violence, Anticlericalism, and the Mexican Revolution - Robert Curley

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the History of Science is a single volume companion that discusses the history of science as it is done today, providing a survey of the debates and issues that dominate current scholarly discussion, with contributions from leading international scholars. Provides a single-volume overview of current scholarship in the history of science edited by one of the leading figures in the field Features forty essays by leading international scholars providing an overview of the key debates and developments in the history of science Reflects the shift towards deeper historical contextualization within the field Helps communicate and integrate perspectives from the history of science with other areas of historical inquiry Includes discussion of non-Western themes which are integrated throughout the chapters Divided into four sections based on key analytic categories that reflect new approaches in the field

Throughout the nineteenth century the idyllic island of Fernando de Noronha, which lies two hundred miles off Brazil's northeastern coast, was home to Brazil's largest forced labor penal colony. In Punishment in Paradise Peter M. Beattie uses Noronha as a case study to understand nineteenth-century Brazil's varied social and cultural values, especially in relation to justice, class, color, civil condition, human rights and labor. As Brazil’s slave population declined after 1850, the use of colonial-era disciplinary practices at Noronha—such as flogging and forced labor—stoked anxieties about human rights and Brazil’s international image. Beattie contends that the treatment of slaves, convicts, and other social categories subject to coercive labor extraction were interconnected and that reforms that benefitted one of these categories made them harder to deny to others. In detailing Noronha's history and the end of slavery as part of an international expansion of human rights, Beattie places Brazil firmly in the purview of Atlantic history.

The Vigorous Core of Our Nationality explores conceptualizations of regional identity and a distinct population group known as nordestinos in northeastern Brazil during a crucial historical period. Beginning with the abolition of slavery and ending with the demise of the Estado Novo under Getœlio Vargas, Stanley E. Blake offers original perspectives on the paradoxical concept of the nordestino and the importance of these debates to the process of state and nation building. Since colonial times, the Northeast has been an agricultural region based primarily on sugar production. The area's population was composed of former slaves and free men of African descent, indigenous Indians, European whites, and mulattos. The image of the nordestino was, for many years, linked with the predominant ethnic group in the region, the Afro-Brazilian. For political reasons, however, the conception of the nordestino later changed to more closely resemble white Europeans. Blake delves deeply into local archives and determines that politicians, intellectuals, and other urban professionals formulated identities based on theories of science, biomedicine, race, and social Darwinism. While these ideas served political, social, and economic agendas, they also inspired debates over social justice and led to reforms for both the region and the people. Additionally, Blake shows how debates over northeastern identity and the concept of the nordestino shaped similar arguments about Brazilian national identity and "true" Brazilian people.

In one of the first books in English to focus on Latin American regional history, distinguished historian Magnus Morner examines the ways in which various sectors of Latin American society, in different regions and at different historical periods, reacted to policies of their respective states. After an introductory discussion of the concept of the state and its transformation in Latin America over time, Morner turns to a series of interrelated case studies from periods ranging from the early sixteenth century to the 1930s. Morner first explores the early segregation efforts of imperial Spain, aimed at separating white Hispanic from native Indian populations in colonial Spanish America - and he explains why those efforts failed. He discusses the incorporation of native populations into the newly established nation of Venezuela from 1830 to 1860. He describes the Brazilian Empire's attempts at modernization through the introduction of the metric system in the 1870s - and the unexpected riots that ensued among tradition-minded citizens of the rural northeast. And he examines government efforts of the River Plate region comprising the city of Buenos Aires and neighboring provinces - to promote European immigration to Argentina.

Includes "Bibliographical section".