January 25, 2013

Brazil had its own monarchy for 90 years.

This is Maria I, AKA Maria the Pious and Maria the Mad:



There's much more to know about the history of Brazil, which is our "History of" country today.

37 comments:

chickelit said...

@Palladian (if you're reading): do you have a sample of brazilin?

The dye was apparently highly valued by the Portuguese, and they explored inland looking for the trees.

Someone should write a book about the importance of dyes in history.

Anonymous said...

Why was she called Maria the Mad?

Was she crazy mad, or hot tempered mad?

YoungHegelian said...

Let's not forget Brazil's great gift to popular culture, the Divine Miss Carmen.

(Great wind playing on this piece. I suspect Rio De Janiero symphony players picking up extra work)

edutcher said...

Compared to Brazilian slavery, American slavery was a stay at Club Med.

The slave owners calculated how many people they would need and ordered that number. They did this every year.

Why?

Because they could count on the fact none of the people who had come over the year before would be alive.

They had all been worked to death in the course of that year.

Brazilian plantation houses had a large mirror on every wall where there wasn't a window. The planters were that much in fear for their lives.

Small wonder.

Sydney said...

I did not realize that Brazil was a military dictatorship as recently as 1985.

eklh1 - she was insane mad from middle age on. The link says she could be heard screaming throughout the palace. When the family fled Portugal for Brazil when Napoleon invaded their country, she screamed throughout the trip. She thought was was being kidnapped and would be tortured. It must have been terrible to suffer mental illness in the pre-psychotropic era.

bleh said...

She wasn't the monarch of an independent Brazilian state. That happened later with Pedro I.

mccullough said...

No pics of Giselle

YoungHegelian said...

@edutcher,

The horror of plantation slavery in South America was a major reason why the Catholic Church put a lot more effort into ending slavery in South America than they did in North America.

Well, that and the fact that they had more political juice in predominantly Catholic Latin America than they did in Protestant North America. In the American argument over slavery the RCC was conspicuous by its silence. Not so in Latin America.

leslyn said...
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leslyn said...

"Brazil had its own monarchy for 90 years."

Isn't that grammatically (dramatically!) redundant?

"Brazil had a monarchy for 90 years."

Yes, I know. Picky, picky,--picky.

Christopher said...

Great, frustrating country. Wonderful people. Unsurpassed music. Amazing potential perpetually unrealized, grinding abysmal widespread poverty.

Similar history of slavery and immigration, including a period of fairly major Japanese immigration.

I'm an aviation guy so I'll have to add, Embraer is one of the world's great aircraft manufacturers.

ampersand said...

They have also never had a war after the 1860s.

ricpic said...

Brazil is a hot humid horror show. Truly a nightmare country. Of course we can no longer talk honestly about the nightmare of the equatorial sphere or of anything else of importance for that matter. T.S. Eliot was filled with revulsion for the tropics and wrote about it in a time when it did not mean career death to confess that all was not equal in your eyes. Long gone in our present era of crushing PC. That's why there is no more creativity. Notice that? The well is dry. Parched for lack of a cleansing thought. Thought, which is to say discrimination, is no longer allowed. No thought no creativity. All dried up. Thank you, beautiful people.

Ann Althouse said...

"Why was she called Maria the Mad?"

From the first link:

"Her madness was first officially noticed in 1786 when Maria had to be carried back to her apartments in a state of delirium. The queen's mental state became increasingly worse. In May 1786 her husband died; Maria was devastated and forbade any court entertainments.

"According to a contemporary[who?] the state festivities resembled religious ceremonies. Her state worsened after the death of her eldest son (and heir-apparent), aged 27, from smallpox, and of her confessor, in 1791.

"In February 1792, she was deemed as mentally insane and was treated by Francis Willis, the same physician who attended George III of the United Kingdom. Willis wanted to take her to England, but that was refused by the Portuguese court. Maria's second son (eldest surviving) and new heir-apparent, John took over the government in her name, even though he only took the title of Prince Regent in 1799.[2]

"When the Real Barraca de Ajuda burnt down in 1794, the court was forced to move to Queluz where the ill queen would lie in her apartments all day and visitors would complain of terrible screams that would echo throughout the palace."

Anonymous said...

Sydney: thanks

leslyn said...
"Brazil had its own monarchy for 90 years."

"Brazil had a monarchy for 90 years."

Are not the same. Canada has a monarchy, but not its own home grown monarchy. England, however, has its own monarchy.

Yes, I know. Picky, picky,--picky.

ampersand said...

They are also in the top 20 countries for homicide rates.
21 per 100000.
(And Venezuela more than doubles that by 45 per 100000)

Ann Althouse said...

I used "own" to signify that it was separate from being under the rule of the monarch in Spain.

Maybe there was a better way to express that.

The History of Brazil Wikipedia article is awkwardly written. I found it hard to extract from.

ampersand said...
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ampersand said...

I used "own" to signify that it was separate from being under the rule of the monarch in Spain.

Maybe there was a better way to express that.

Why Yes.
I used "own" to signify that it was separate from being under the rule of the monarch in Portugal.

BarrySanders20 said...

I am planning a trip to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup. Taking the wife and four soccer playing kids. Several cities on the northeast coast are host cities, so we're planning beach, soccer, and experiencing Brazil during the international tournament. I've begun on-line lessons in Portuguese. Not much luck so far picking up the language.

It will be an adventure.

Anonymous said...

Compared to Brazilian slavery, American slavery was a stay at Club Med.

Even though Brazil had many times the number of slaves as the American South, and slavery was far more important to its economy, it abolished slavery only about 20 years after the South without having fought a Civil War.

Peter

edutcher said...

True enough, but the US was divided in other ways as well.

PS Young, in the US, the Catholic Church at the time of the Civil War had very little sway among any but its parishioners, few of whom were slaveowners.

Hagar said...

Portugal, Madame, Portugal!

Bob Loblaw said...

"Brazil had its own monarchy for 90 years."

Isn't that grammatically (dramatically!) redundant?


Is it? Canada has a monarchy that isn't its own.

kentuckyliz said...

IKR? When I was Canadian, the UK refused me immigration or a work permit. I'm like, the fekkin' Queen is on my passport!

I left Canada on its centennial of Independence. I was born between the two Independence Days. I'm kindly independent myself.

bleh said...

Spain?!

Palladian said...
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Palladian said...

@Palladian (if you're reading): do you have a sample of brazilin?

The dye was apparently highly valued by the Portuguese, and they explored inland looking for the trees.


I do indeed have brazilin, in the form of the dye precipitated onto alumina. I made the lake pigment myself from brazilwood sawdust soaked in a potassium hydroxide solution. I also have some liquid dye/ink that I made through a similar process, following a curious old 17th century recipe involving boiling wine vinegar. I should post pictures of them. The precipitated lake pigment is a lovely, rosy pink. The dye/ink is the color of slightly oxidized blood. Unfortunately neither are very lightfast; such is the nature of most dyes.

chickelit said...

I suspected you'd have some. Thanks for confirming.

How can you distinguish (with this dye) lightfast from oxidative instability? The catechol portion of brazilin looks susceptible to partial oxidation to brazilein.

BTW, I didn't know this before but the country Brazil took its name from the wood which yields this dye.

Anonymous said...

All you need to know about Brazil is in the film "City of God".

Ann Althouse said...

"Why Yes. I used "own" to signify that it was separate from being under the rule of the monarch in Portugal."

LOL.

Sorry. I do know it's Portugal.

Craig said...

George III, great grandson of George I, was the first of the Hanover Kings born and bred in England. George I didn't speak ten words of English and only made a few perfunctory appearances on British soil. His greatest accomplishment, ruling in absentia, was to allow Robert Walpole to establish himself as Britain's first Prime Minister.

caseym54 said...

It is hard to read that Wikipedia page without trying to edit the grammar. But where to start?

ken in tx said...

Many, about 10,000, ex-confederate officers emigrated to Brazil after the War Between the States. Some of their former slaves went with them voluntarily. Brazil had slavery until 1888. They were called Los Confederados. They introduced pecans and pecan pie to Brazil and founded the towns of New Texas and America. They have more than 100,000 descendants and have an annual get together where they eat fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, and other traditional southern foods. They mostly speak Portuguese but retain some vestiges of southern English.

Mitch H. said...

I saw that business of Brazil supposedly being named for brazilwood, and not the legendary island Brasil, supposedly lying somewhere beyond the known edge of the world, usage extant in the fourteenth and fifteen centuries in the Atlantic littoral, including among the Portuguese. Since the brazilwood was *native* to Brazil, and by definition could only have been named after discovery, I can't help but wonder whether these "it's named for the wood" people don't have the causality inverted. Next, they'll try and tell us the Antilles weren't named for mythic Antillia.

chickelit said...

@Mitch: Do you think that Paracelsus discovered phosphorus and not Hennig Brand?

What difference, at this point, does it make?

Mitch H. said...

I never gave any thought to it, chicklit. It certainly sounds *plausible*, given late-Renaissance alchemists' fondness for obsessive secrecy, but I don't really know an awful lot about Paracelsius, or Brand for that matter. Looks like the relevant discussion of your "Montana Urban Legend" to that effect, is hidden on an invitation-only blog?