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est raises, reasonable incomes, and pensions by an intransigent, uninterested, and prof-
ligate court. The military now preferred to give orders rather than take them, to change
governments from an absolutist monarchy whose power was invested in divine right to
a republic whose legitimacy had broader sources in secular political rights.
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The powers of reason and science as necessary elements for progress in a modern
polity were also key ideological tenets, as the military technocrats of the young tropical
country compared the scientific advances of Germany, Great Britain, France, and the
United States with the intellectual “torpor” of the tropical Iberian realms. Positivism
was central in shaping the ethics of the young cadets who were to make up the new
military and governing cadre. Among other charismatic professors in Praia Vermelha,
Constant—himself a Paraguayan War veteran—was the principal advocate for Comtean
ideas and imbued young cadets in the 1880s with this passion.
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Life and Letters at Praia Vermelha
Praia Vermelha was less ofa military institution than an applied polytechnic school with
a strong philosophical bent. With its focus on social philosophy and technical and mil-
itary training, it provided a demanding curriculum for talented young men. Devoted to
the applied sciences such as engineering and survey, such an institution allowed one to
learn the skills that were defining technical and economic progress in Europe and the
United States and mimicked to a certain degree the field training of the British Roy-
al Geographical Society. In contrast to the national universities, which largely focused
on the liberal arts and suitably genteel professions such as law, Praia Vermelha expec-
ted its students—clever and mostly poorer boys—to become the technocratic problem
solvers of the regime and officers of the realm. It was perhaps not surprising, then, that
egalitarian echoes of French Republicanism wafted through the halls and dormitories of
the academy. As members of the precarious “middle” classes, whose access to systems
of patronage in the last days of Pedro's court was marginal at best, and highly sens-
itive to the vast inequalities of Brazil's oligarchic slavocracy, these youths had polit-
ical dreams inspired by revolutionary ideas. Brazil, with its monarch and its millions
of slaves, seemed in the mid-1880s atavistic and vastly out of step with the rest of the
world, including its own educated youth.
Whilethe“cadetphilosophers”sharedthedreamsofanewsociety,theymostlyrejec-
ted radical goals even as Marxist revolutionary thought galvanized Europe. The emer-
ging antimonarchist Brazilian elite preferred governance that did not depend on upris-
ings in the French model but rather a peaceful transfer from royalty and oligarchs to a
modernizing, secular technocratic class. Given the elite and military's lack of interest in
true structural change, the ideas and political philosophy of Comte's Positivism was a
good fit for Praia Vermelha, whose young cadets were seeking a practical social philo-
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