The race to progress: Census taking and nation making in Brazil (1870-1920)

HAHR - Hispanic American Historical Review

Volumn 89, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 435-470

  Loveman, Mara ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 68549130756     PISSN: 00182168     EISSN: 15271900     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00182168-2009-002     Document Type: Review

References (87)

1. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatística, Recenseamento da população do Imperio do Brazil a que se procedeu no dia 1 de agosto de 1872 (Rio de Janeiro: A Directoria, 1873-76), "Quadros Geraes," vol.19, pp. 1-2
2. Theodore M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986)
3. Alain Desrosières, The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998)
4. Marc J. Ventresca, "When States Count: Institutional and Political Dynamics in Modern Census Establishment, 1800-1993" (PhD diss., Stanford Univ., 1995)
5. John Meyer, "The World Polity and the Authority of the Nation-State," in Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society, and the Individual, ed. George M. Thomas, John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, and John Boli (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1987), chap. 2
6. Most Latin American states created a central statistics agency and attempted at least one national census before the end of the nineteenth century. By 1930 every Latin American state but one (Ecuador) had done so. Mara Loveman, "Nation-State Building, 'Race' and the Production of Official Statistics: Brazil in Comparative Perspective" (PhD diss., UCLA, 2001)
7. Laws pertaining to the DGE are collected in Conselho Nacional de Estatística, Legislação básica dos recenseamentos de 1872 e 1890 (Rio de Janeiro: IBGE, 1951), Documentos censitários, Serie A, Número 1
8. Aloysio Villela de Azevedo, Os recenseamentos no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: IBGE, 1990)
9. The present study does not aim to provide a comprehensive institutional history of the DGE or to trace its antecedents; for such an account, see Nelson Senra's insightful and encyclopedic História das Estatísticas Brasileiras, 2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: IBGE, 2006)
10. Joaquim Norberto de Souza e Silva, Investigações sobre os recenseamentos da população geral do Império e de cada provincia de per si tentados desde os tempos coloniais até hoje (1870; São Paulo: Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas, 1980)
11. Maria Luiza Marcílio, "Levantamentos censitários da fase proto-estatística do Brazil," Anais da Historia 9 (1977): 63-75
12. Tarcísio Rodrigues Botelho, População e nação no Brasil do século XIX (São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo, 1998)
13. See also Silvana Patriarca, Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996)
14. Racialism refers to "the conviction that human beings . . . can be partitioned into discrete kinds whose reproduction turns on natural processes such as inheritance." Racism refers to the "belief that the value and potential of individuals follows from their membership in the various races of humankind." Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture and the Child's Construction of Human Kinds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 3
15. See also Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Racisms," in Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1990), 4-5
16. Edith Piza and Fúlvia Rosemberg, "Color in the Brazilian Census," in Race in Contemporary Brazil, ed. Rebecca Reichmann (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1999)
17. Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000)
18. Edward E. Telles, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press 2004)
19. Sharon M. Lee, "Racial Classifications in the US Census: 1890-1990," Ethnic and Racial Studies 16, no.1 (1993): 75-94
20. Charles Hirschman, "The Meaning and Measurement of Ethnicity in Malaysia: An Analysis of Census Classifications," Journal of Asian Studies 46, no. 3 (1987): 555-582
21. Telles, Race in Another America, 31
22. Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought, 2nd ed. (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1994). Debates in the 1870s over Chinese immigration as a temporary alternative to slave labor were an important exception to this generalization. Opponents invoked biological metaphors suggesting the "unassimilability" of the Chinese and their "degenerative" influence
23. Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1999), 14-39
24. Nancy Appelbaum, "Post-Revisionist Scholarship on Race," Latin American Research Review 40, no.3 (October 2005): 206-17
25. Peter M. Beattie, The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 1864-1945 (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2001)
26. Jerry Dávila, Diploma of Whiteness: Race and Social Policy in Brazil, 1917-1945 (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2003)
27. Lesser, Negotiating National Identity
28. On censuses and state formation, see e.g. Stuart Woolf, "Statistics and the Modern State," Comparative Studies of Society and History 31 (1989): 588-604
29. On censuses and nation making, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), chap. 10
30. Patriarca, Numbers and Nationhood
31. George Reid Andrews, The Afro-Argentines of Buenos Aires, 1800 - 1900 (Wisconsin: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1990)
32. Margo J. Anderson, "The History of Women and the History of Statistics," Journal of Women's History 4, no. 1 (1992): 14-36
33. Botelho, População e nação no Brasil do século XIX, 7. This was actually Brazil's second attempt at a general census. The first, two decades earlier, was frustrated by a popular revolt against the civil registration decree that accompanied the census law
34. See Mara Loveman, "Blinded like a State: The Revolt against Civil Registration in Nineteenth-Century Brazil," Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no.1 (2007): 5-39
35. Guillermo Palacios, "A 'Guerra dos Maribondos': Uma revolta camponesa no Brasil escravista (Pernambuco, 1851-1852) - Primeira Leitura," História: Questões e Debates 10 (1989): 7-75
36. José de Alencar argued forcefully against the creation of the DGE. José Martiniano de Alencar, Discursos Parlamentares: Obra comemorativa do centenário de morte de José de Alencar, Perfis Parlamentares 1 (Brasília: Câmara dos Deputados, 1977), 591-611
37. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatística, Relatorio, Trabalhos estatísticos, Apresentado ao Illm e Exm. Sr. Conselheiro Dr. João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira, Ministro e Secretario d'Estado dos Negocios do Imperio pelo Director Geral Interino Dr. José Maria do Coutto (Rio de Janeiro: Typographia do Hypolito José Pinto, 1873), 43
38. In 1890 "race or color" was listed as a single item in the list of mandated DGE queries. Decree no.331 of April 12, 1890, Art. 2, Section 4, reproduced in Albino Esteves, Directoria Geral de Estatística: Apontamentos históricos e extrátos (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, Comissão Censitária Nacional, 1941), 15
39. Skidmore, Black into White
40. Brazil, DGE, Relatorio, Trabalhos estatísticos, Apresentado ao Illm e Exm. Sr. Conselheiro Dr. João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira . . . (1873), 37
41. Relatorio, Trabalhos estatísticos, Apresentado ao Illm e Exm. Sr. Conselheiro Dr. João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira . . . (Ibid., 23-24
42. Manuel Francisco Correia to Visconde do Rio Branco, 30 Nov. 1874
43. and Manuel Francisco Correia to Dr. João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira, 28 Dec. 1874, DGE Minutas 1874, Arquivo Nacional, Grupo de Identificacão de Fundos Internos (hereafter GIFI) 5C 266
44. Waldemar de Almeida Barbosa, A Câmara dos Deputados como fator de unidade nacional (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1977), 90
45. Decree no.4.835 of 1 Dec. 1871, cited in Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatística, Relatorio, Trabalhos estatísticos, Apresentado ao Illm e Exm. Sr. Conselheiro Dr. João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira, Ministro e Secretario d'Estado dos Negocios do Imperio pelo Director Geral Conselheiro Manoel Francisco Correia (Rio de Janeiro: Typographia Franco-Americana, 1874), 57
46. Brazil, DGE, Relatorio e trabalhos estatísticos apresentado ao Illm e Exm. Sr. Conselheiro Dr. João Alfredo Corrêa de Oliveira . . . (1875), "Escravos existentes no Imperio," 1-2
47. Judy Bieber Freitas, "Slavery and Social Life: Attempts to Reduce Free People to Slavery in the Sertão Mineiro, Brazil, 1850-1871," Journal of Latin American Studies 26 (1994): 597
48. Sidney Chalhoub, Visões da Liberdade: Uma historia das ultimas decadas da escravidão na corte (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998)
49. Freitas, "Slavery and Social Life," 610
50. The cancellation of the 1880 census may have owed in part to popular revolts in the northeast. Roderick J. Barman, "The Brazilian Peasantry Reexamined: The Implications of the Quebra-quilo Revolt, 1874-1875," Hispanic American Historical Review 57, no.2 (1977): 401-424
51. Jornal do Commércio, 22 Dec. 1890, p. 1; 25 Dec. 1890, pp. 1-2; 29 Dec. 1890, p. 1
52. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatística, Synopse do recenseamento de 31 de dezembro de 1890 (Rio de Janeiro: Officina da Estadística, 1898)
53. Decree no. 113D of 2 Jan. 1890, article 3, cited in Azevedo, Os recenseamentos no Brasil, 92
54. Brazil, Ministerio do Interior, Relatorio 1891, Anexo E, "Relatorio da DGE," 43
55. Nancy Leys Stepan, The Hour of Eugenics: Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1991)
56. Piza and Rosemberg, "Color in the Brazilian Census," 41. Piza and Rosemberg also write that in comparison with the census of 1872, "in 1890, with the change from a monarchy to a republic and the end of slavery, the census was less concerned with race and more concerned with the nationalities represented in the population" (p. 39). In fact, the DGE became more concerned with both "nationality" and "race" between 1872 and 1890
57. Relatorio apresentado ao Dr. Miguel Calmon du Pin e Almeida, Ministro da Industria, Viação e Obras Públicas, pelo Dr. José Luiz S. de Bulhões Carvalho (Ibid., 15
58. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatística, Synopse do Recenseamento de 31 de dezembro de 1900 (Rio de Janeiro: Typographia da Estatística, 1905)
59. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatística, Boletim Commemorativo da Exposição Nacional de 1908 (Rio de Janeiro: Typographia da Estatística, 1908), 7
60. Boletim Commemorativo da Exposição Nacional de 1908 (Ibid., 41
61. Jeffrey D. Needell, "History, Race, and the State in the Thought of Oliveira Viana," Hispanic American Historical Review 75, no.1 (1995): 5
62. Jeffrey D. Needell, A Tropical Belle Epoque: Elite Culture and Society in Turn-of-the- Century Rio de Janeiro (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987)
63. José Murilo de Carvalho, Os bestializados: O Rio de Janeiro e a Republica que não foi (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1987)
64. The National Defense League, for example, offered to do "whatever it could" to help the census, making its headquarters, including "telephone lines, lights, etc.," available to the DGE "anytime, day or night" ( Jornal do Commércio, 20 Mar. 1920, p. 4)
65. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatística, Recenseamento do Brazil realizado em 1 de setembro de 1920 (Rio de Janeiro: Typografia da Estatística, 1922), first page, unnumbered
66. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 2:59. Mann defines infrastructural power as "the institutional capacity of a central state . . . to penetrate its territories and logistically implement decisions" (p. 59). Mann differentiates the state's infrastructural power - the power to rule through society via the administrative coordination of social life - from the state's despotic power, the power to rule over society via monopolization of the means of physical coercion
67. Brazil, DGE, Recenseamento do Brazil realizado em 1 de setembro de 1920, 488
68. Recenseamento do Brazil realizado em 1 de setembro de 1920, Ibid., 489 n. 1
69. Brazil, DGE, Synopse do recenseamento de 31 de dezembro de 1890, vii
70. Oliveira Vianna, "Raça e pesquizas estatisticas," Correio Paulistano, 25 Sept. 1926
71. Biographical information comes from Lobo da Silva's official Fe do Officio, Arquivo Histórico do Exército, Rio de Janeiro
72. Arthur Lobo da Silva, "Hygiene Militar," Medicina Militar 13 (1911): 731-732
73. To corroborate this thesis, Loba da Silva called for the creation of a national anthropometric service in the Army Medical Corps, like those in many European countries. The call was heeded, and in 1928 Lobo da Silva published "Anthropology in the Brazilian Army," which used the anthropometric data on soldiers to prove that his 1911 argument was correct
74. Nísia Trindade Lima and Gilberto Hochman, "Condenado pela raça, absolvido pela medicina: O Brasil descoberto pelo movimento sanitarista da Primeira Republica," in Raça, Ciencia e Sociedade, ed. Marcos Chor Maio and Ricardo Ventura Santos (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fiocruz, 1996), 23-40
75. Frank McCann, "The Formative Period of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Army Thought, 1900-1922," Hispanic American Historical Review 64, no.4 (Nov. 1984): 737-65
76. Dain Borges, " 'Puffy, Ugly, Slothful and Inert': Degeneration in Brazilian Social Thought, 1880-1940," Journal of Latin American Studies 25 (1993): 235-56
77. Fernando de Azevedo, Brazilian Culture: An Introduction to the Study of Culture in Brazil (New York: MacMillan, 1950), 40-41
78. cited in Thomas E. Skidmore, "Racial Ideas and Social Policy in Brazil, 1870-1940," in The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940, ed. Richard Graham (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1990), chap. 2, pp. 22-23
79. See Barbara Fields, "Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America," New Left Review 181 (May-June 1990): 95-118
80. I elaborate on this problem in Mara Loveman, "Is 'Race' Essential? A Comment on Bonilla-Silva," American Sociological Review 64, no.6 (1999): 891-898
81. Ventresca, "When States Count"
82. Margo J. Anderson, The American Census: A Social History (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1988)
83. Nobles, Shades of Citizenship
84. David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel, Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)
85. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1985), 194-196
86. Such a perspective can be contrasted to approaches that begin with the universalizing assumption that "race is present everywhere." Howard Winant, The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 1
87. For an elaboration of this point, see Rogers Brubaker, Mara Loveman, and Peter Stamatov, "Ethnicity as Cognition," Theory and Society 33, no.1 (2004): 31-64