Primeira circum-navegação brasileira e primeira missão do Brasil à China (1879)

Abstract

When considering transpacific relations between Asia and Latin America, scholars have begun to pay closer attention to the centuries-long historical connections between China and Brazil. The global circulation of goods, people, natural resources, and ideas between Brazil and China began in the early sixteenth century when Portuguese explorers, in competition with other European empires to find the quickest oceanic routes to the silk and spice trade, connected a global trade network that linked port cities in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The nineteenth-century history of China-Brazil relations had a contingent relationship to earlier histories of the movement in human labor, goods, languages, cultures, and concepts. In Brazil, the gradual end of African slavery led many intellectuals, politicians, and agriculturalists to look to China for possibilities of setting up new trade networks and Chinese contract labor as a possible substitution for slave labor. These economic concerns were entangled with visions of Brazilian political modernity and debates about how the colonial empire could enter the world stage as a modern republican state.Journalist Marli Cristina Scomazzon and coauthor Jeff Franco make a significant contribution to this critical and volatile period in Brazilian political and economic history. Their book, Primeira circum-navegação brasileira e primeira missão do Brasil à China (1879), details the Brazilian Navy's first trip around the world and the first Brazilian mission to China. The book is sponsored by the Brazilian Navy's Department of Publication and Dissemination and endorsed by José Carlos Mathias, vice admiral and director of historical patrimony and documentation of the Navy, and Pierre Paulo da Cunha Castro, captain of sea and war, who author the book's prologue and preface, respectively. Organized like a navy museum exhibition catalog with a patriotic tone, the book provides an exposition of the global voyage of the corvette Vital de Oliveira, which circumnavigated the world in 430 days from November 19, 1879, to January 21, 1881. The book's two main parts follow the circumnavigation route of the Vital de Oliveira. The first part is further subdivided according to a list of the port cities, regions, and countries where the corvette made stops, including Gibraltar, France, Malta, Egypt, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Singapore, China, Japan, the United States, Mexico, Chile, Patagonia, and Uruguay. The second part exhibits archival materials about the first Brazilian delegation to China. The book's organization and methodology reconstruct a military history about the two main goals of the Brazilian Navy for the trip around the world: to provide professional instruction on long sea voyages, and to fulfill a diplomatic mission in China with the intent to “buscar mão de obra chinesa para substituição do trabalho escravo no Brasil” (p. 39). The sections of the first part largely retrace the voyage through providing dates and times of departure and arrival, followed by long citations of the travel writings from people aboard the warship or accounts printed contemporaneously in Brazilian newspapers. The book is composed of a diverse archive of illustrations, musical scores, European and Chinese diplomatic missives, photographs, and passenger lists, but the book's archive is compiled from an uneven grouping of sources, ranging from personal souvenirs and national archives to portraits of Qing officials taken from Wikipedia. The second part of the book is dedicated to the first Brazilian diplomatic mission to China and is similarly organized according to the cities that the delegation visited. The sections include long quotations taken from Brazilian diplomatic writings or Brazilian newspapers, which are presented as facts without questioning the politics of the newspapers, journalists, travel writers, or diplomatic perspectives. These shortcomings need not be limitations since the book presents many interesting details when approached with caution and a critical lens. It will be of interest to historians in general and opens opportunities for further research on the long and connected histories of China and Brazil.