A Place in Politics

A Place in Politics is a thorough reinterpretation of the politics and political culture of the Brazilian state of So Paulo between the 1890s and the 1930s. The worlds foremost coffee-producing region from the outset of this period and home to more than six million people by 1930, So Paulo was an economic and demographic giant. In an era marked by political conflict and dramatic social and cultural change in Brazil, nowhere were the conflicts as intense or changes more dramatic than in So Paulo. The southeastern state was the site of the countrys most important political developments, from the contested presidential campaign of 190910 to the massive military revolt of 1924. Drawing on a wide array of source materials, James P. Woodard analyzes these events and the republican political culture that informed them. Woodards fine-grained political history proceeds chronologically from the final years of the nineteenth century, when So Paulos leaders enjoyed political preeminence within the federal system codified by the Constitution of 1891, through the mass mobilization of 193132, in which So Paulos people marched, rioted, and eventually took up arms against the national government in what was to be Brazils last great regionalist revolt. In taking to the streets in the name of their state, constitutionalism, and the civilization that they identified with both, the people of So Paulo were at once expressing their allegiance to elements of a regionally distinct political culture and converging on a broader, more participatory public sphere that had arisen amid the political conflicts of the preceding decades.