Entre as raças e o território: os projetos de nação na história do Brasil de João Ribeiro

Abstract

This final paper is focused on the textbook História do Brasil written by João Ribeiro. This work was first published in 1900, aimed at students of the Colégio Pedro II. In 1901 his work was divided into two versions: one for primary schools, and the second for students in science and Regular Schools. Depending on the model that the Colégio Pedro II had in relation to their state counterparts, the work of João Ribeiro became the most prominent in his time and was widespread among these schools. The problem developed in his work is the question of nationality, based on the concepts of race and territory, placed in my study, as the cornerstones of the Brazilian nationality. Thus, my main objective is to investigate the project of nation expressed in the book, his formulation on the Brazilian nationality, and how that representation is a long record of historical ideas, located between the last period of the monarchy and the beginning of the First Republic. Through the concepts of space experience and horizon of expectation, I have made a research based on the idea of race and religion – the construction of Brazilian nationality expressed in the History of Brazil. Through this study we can understand João Ribeiro‘s work as an expression of the intellectual debates of his time and as an active speech, which marks the historiography of his epoch, becoming a counterpoint against the history inaugurated by Varnhagen in the second half of the nineteenth century. This paper shows that the historical time in this work is expressed by the acceptance of racialist theories, although not exclusively, as explanatory models for the backwardness of Brazilian society in the face of the civilized West. The other reason is the moral dimension that consists in the fallen race, the Mameluke, the expression of Brazilian national race. Within the book these two dimensions are underlying to the occupied territory for over four hundred years, which would ensure the historic right to the Brazilian nation over the territory it occupies. Faced with such social and moral state, the horizon of expectations pointed by João Ribeiro to what would be the Brazilian nation in the long term, is a new moment of racial admixture between the Mameluke race with the new waves of European immigrants, what frequently happened in the period. This movement would regenerate biologically the Brazilian race, and at the same time, it would be refurbished through public education, for the civil and political life at the Republican regime.