The Unlikely Protagonist - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 16

The Bragança court in Brazil, enmeshed in its own pressing intrigues and domestic dis-
putes, focused mostly on patronage and petty bureaucracy. 10 This circle was at odds
with, and largely oblivious to, the enormous socioeconomic and political upheavals that
occurred as the structure and location of Brazil's economic dynamos shifted from the
slave-basedsugarcaneestatesanddepletedminesofMinasGeraistotheboomingsouth-
ern coffee lands surrounding Rio and São Paulo, the latter's incipient industrial systems,
and wealth beginning to flow from Amazonian forests. Economic power fell away from
the old Northeastern sugar oligarchs and increasingly swung to an emerging coterie of
urban professionals, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, and minor industrialists. As the nine-
teenth century wore on, the divergence between the royal corte and those who comman-
ded economic engines of the country became more acute. The new economic groups
from thriving provinces like São Paulo increasingly differed from the old oligarchs in
their views on immigration law, tariffs, land policy, and government subsidies. The lack
of representation felt by this rising economic coalition became more galling: their ap-
petites for power and influence went unattended even as the hand of the Crown in their
affairs seemed “mostly to grasp and meddle.” 11 Amazonian elites, well beyond the im-
perial system, were commanded more by global demands and local administrators than
an indifferent emperor and, as we will see, resisted royal incursions. New elites found
themselves shut out from the delightful sinecures of the Brazilian “Versailles” of the
Braganças and from meaningful political expression. They faced obstructive economic
policies even as the taxes from their successful ventures paid the imperial bills. 12
The structural change in the economy coincided with processes of urbanization stim-
ulated by international migration and expanded trade and industry, and had the effect of
reinforcing the coastal towns and cities, such as Rio and São Paulo, as centers of polit-
ical and cultural life rather than simple entrepôts. 13 These rising cities provided fertile
ground for modern European ideas and nourished the ambition of local elites to shake
Brazil out of its torpor so as to vie with Europe on equal economic and cultural terms as
a modern state, rather than as a threadbare outpost of the declining Lusophone empire.
The modernizing coteries, attentive to European intellectual fashions, vulnerable to the
European (especially British) fiscal pressures, and alert to the liberal if not revolution-
ary trends in France and the United States, increasingly chafed under the conservative
directives emanating from imperial Rio and craved more power and local autonomy in
the face of parasitic dynasties maintained by royal favor. The regime's rigidities left few
options.Bythe1870s,republicanmanifestosandliberalpartieswerepromotingpolicies
thatwouldultimatelyunderminethetraditionaloligarchs,curtailgovernmentinterferen-
ce in the private sector, and enhance local powers. Their political agenda, influenced by
liberal politics and ideologies of Europe and the United States, included direct elections
ofstategovernors,autonomyofthejudiciary,religiousfreedom,secularization,freedom