p 
 
 2659 
 
 CO 
 
German Political Designs with 
 Reference to Brazil 
 
 
 By 
 
 LORETTA BAUM 
 
 Reprinted from The Hispanic American Historical Review, 
 Vol 11, No. 4, November, 1919 
 
Reprinted from The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. II, No. 4, November, 1919 
 
 GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS WITH REFERENCE 
 
 TO BRAZIL! 
 
 This article purports to be a brief, extensive sketch of German 
 political designs with reference to Brazil— the reason for their 
 being, the means employed for their realization, and the reasons 
 for their failure. The article concludes with a brief statement 
 of the influence these designs had in determining Brazil's r61e 
 in the present Great War. 
 
 German political designs with reference to Brazil had root in 
 an economic and a political dream. These two dreams cam6 
 into aggressive being simultaneously in the '90's as the result 
 of the sudden outburst of national energy which followed the 
 war of 1870. 
 
 By the end of the nineteenth century Germany had outgrown 
 itself economically. Its rapid increase of population and its 
 extraordinary development of industries dependent upon the 
 importation of raw materials and the exportation of manu- 
 factured commodities destroyed German self sufficiency and 
 forced Germany to look out over the world for some resource 
 to ofi'set the handicap of restricted territory. As Professor 
 Wagner, a prominent Berlin economist, said : ''The most impor- 
 tant task Germany has to perform in the future consists in 
 obtaining control of regions where raw products necessary to 
 her life and industry are produced". ^ The creation of a Greater 
 Germany across the sea, self -feeding, self-sufficient, and shut out 
 
 * This paper, prepared in my seminar at the University of California, makes 
 no pretense of being a thorough survey of the subject of which it treats. In 
 particular it has not drawn upoti German sources. It is merely a seminar report, 
 but as it gives an excellent summary of periodical articles in English and some 
 works in French, it has seemed worth while to offer it to the readers of the 
 Review. — C. E. Chapman. 
 
 ^ "Germany and Pan Germany," in Contemporary Review (New York, July, 
 1903), LXXXIV. 173-188. This article gives an excellent accovmt of Germany's 
 economic position in the world and German aims. 
 
 586 
 
WITHDRAWN 
 
 GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 687 
 
 to all foreign trade therefore became the dream of German 
 economists. 
 
 Writings of all sorts and conditions of Germans pointed to 
 South America, particularly Brazil, as the "land of promise", 
 the land where this Greater Germany might rise and render 
 Germany economically independent of other countries, might 
 provide it with raw materials and secure its position as a great 
 world power. 3 Brazil looked more attractive than other lands 
 because that country was sparsely settled, had immense material 
 resources, had a healthful climate, and was poorly governed, but 
 primarily because it had already received a large influx of Ger- 
 man immigrants.* Dr. Herman Leyser, an enthusiastic German 
 traveler, in his recently published book about Santa Catharina 
 said in regard to these immigrants: ''Nowhere are our colonies, 
 those loyal offshoots from the mother root, so promising as here. 
 Today in these provinces over 30 per cent of the inhabitants 
 are German or of German descent and the ratio of their natural 
 increase far exceeds that of the Portuguese. Surely to us 
 belongsthefutureof this part of the world. . . . Here indeed 
 in South Brazil is a land where the German emigrant may retain 
 his nationality, where for all that is comprised in the word 
 'Germanismus' a glorious future smiles". ^ 
 
 Professor Schmoller, a prominent lecturer on political economy 
 at the Berlin University, in the first volume of Handels und 
 Machtpolitik wrote: ''We must desire that at all cost a German 
 
 3 The Pan Germanic Doctrine (ed. by Percy W. Bunting, London and New 
 York, 1904), p. 261. This book is an anonymous study of German political aims 
 and aspirations. It is probably the best book on the above subject on account 
 of its translations of many pertinent original documents and speeches, and its 
 full discussion of German colonization in South America. 
 
 * J. Holland Rose, The Origins of the War, 1871-1914 (London and New York, 
 1915), p. 54. This gives a clear outline of conditions leading to the Great War, 
 valuable for the above subject on account of its explanation of the sudden 
 outburst of German energy. 
 
 * Stephen Bonsai, "Greater Germany in South America," in North American 
 Review (New York, January, 1903), CLXXVI. 58-67. This is an excellent 
 article on German activity in South America, written by a newspaper corre- 
 spondent (who, as it happens, was with Hindenberg's army on the east front in 
 1915). It gives helpful information concerning German exploring expeditions in 
 Brazil, and activity in Germany, favoring the colonizing movement. 
 
 f . 
 
 1 
 
588 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 country containing some 20 to 30 million Germans may grow in 
 the twentieth century in Brazil, and that, no matter whether it 
 remains a portion of Brazil or becomes a self-containing state or 
 enters into close relations with our empire. Unless our connection 
 with Brazil is always secured by ships of war and unless Ger- 
 many is able to exercise pressure there, our development is 
 threatened".* 
 
 An anonymous writer in Die Grenzhoten, by far the most 
 influential political weekly in Germany,' advocated the con- 
 centration of German effort upon the three states, Parana, Santa 
 Catharina, Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, where German colonists 
 were most numerous and most flourishing, saying: "As soon as 
 Germany has drawn South Brazil within her sphere of interest, 
 she can offer emigrants an absolute guarantee that their inter- 
 ests will be safe guarded. A colonial army should be organized 
 among the settlers so that they need not return to Germany 
 to perform their military service. Then in a few years a young 
 German colonial empire will grow up there as mighty as, if not 
 mightier than, any other that ever emanated from Europe".* 
 
 Many other Germans wrote in a similar vein, but in addition 
 to these writers, the great German colonizing concerns, the 
 Hanseatic Colonizing Company of Hamburg and the German 
 Colonial Society of Berlin, had for their avowed purpose the 
 creation of a German nation in Brazil. These concerns had 
 become lords and masters of over 8000 square miles of Brazilian 
 territory. This land they aimed to people with immigrants 
 willing to be kept German, to perpetuate the German language 
 and German customs, and to maintain an unyielding loyalty to 
 German economic hopes. They sent out whole libraries of 
 material in the form of pamphlets, maps, and newspaper publi- 
 
 * Pan Germanic Doctrine, p. 239. 
 
 ''J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany (3 ed., London, 1909), p. 139. In this 
 book J. Ellis Barker, an English journalist and author, clearly sets forth Ger- 
 many's political and economic problems, its foreign and domestic policy, its 
 ambitions and the causes of its success. The volume contains a brief summary 
 of German activity in Brazil and some valuable information about prominent 
 German writers and German periodicals. 
 
 ' Pan Germanic Doctrine, p. 242. 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 589 
 
 cations each vieing with the other in painting Brazil as the land 
 of the glorious future. They had public lectures delivered from 
 time to time, dwelling upon the desirabilities of Germanizing 
 Brazil.® The German Colonial Society alone published the 
 Colonial Zeitschrift, a weekly, maintained a permanent museum 
 of the colonies in Berlin, promoted a tropical proving ground 
 in Hamburg and a school of agriculture in Wilhemshof, and 
 founded in many of the colleges chairs for the propogation of 
 colonial knowledge and languages.^" 
 
 But German writers and German colonizing concerns were 
 not the only ones to see in Brazil the ''land of promise." There 
 were the industrialists in general, shipbuilders, iron and steel 
 manufacturers, owners of textile mills, etc., who had vis- 
 ions of a time when coal, iron, copper, petroleum, rubber, and 
 cotton from a land worked and owned by Germans, namely 
 Brazil, should furnish an endless supply of raw stuffs. There 
 were finally Germany's growing millions, compelled to import 20 
 per cent of their sustenance, who had visions of a "horn of 
 plenty — corn, sugar, coffee, cocoa, rice, filled in Brazil from 
 Germanized soil"." 
 
 Thus Brazil glowed as the ''land of promise" in Germany's 
 economic dream of a Greater Germany across the sea. She also 
 played a part in Germany's political dream — Pangermanism. 
 
 Pangermanism was no new notion, for generations of students 
 had enthusiastically intoned the famous line at the end of Arndt's 
 national song of 1813, "Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein'\^^hu.t 
 in the '90s, under the uniquely-stimulating influence of Wilhelm 
 II, it became the dominant ideal of the German race.^^ He 
 gave formal expression to this ideal in 1896 when he said: "Out 
 
 9 Frederick William Wile, "German Colonization in Brazil", in Fortnightly 
 Review (New York, January, 1906), LXXXV. 129. This is an excellent article 
 of German activity in Brazil, full of concrete detail. Its author was the resident 
 Berlin correspondent of the New York and Chicago dailies for ten years pre- 
 ceding the war, 
 
 ^° Bonsai, op. cit. 
 
 " Wile, op. cit. 
 
 « Rose, p. 64. 
 
 » Ibid., p. 67. 
 
590 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 of the German empire a world empire has arisen. Everywhere 
 in all parts of the earth thousands of our countrymen reside. 
 German riches, German knowledge, German activity make their 
 way across the ocean. The value of German possessions on the 
 seas is some thousands of millons. Gentlemen, the serious duty 
 devolves on you to help me link this Greater German Empire 
 close to the home country by helping me in complete unity to 
 fulfill my duty towards the Germans in foreign parts. "^^ 
 
 In brief, the idea of Pangermanism seems to have been ''the 
 welding together and consolidating the Germans in Europe and 
 across the seas ethnologically, economically, and even politically 
 so that where the German language is spoken there too may 
 German interests and authority be paramount ".^^ But Andr6 
 Cheradame, an authority on Pangermanism, having made a 
 study of it for twenty-two years, claims that it had for its 
 aim "not only to annex regions inhabited by masses of Germans 
 on the border of the empire, not only to gather within the same 
 political fold peoples who are more or less German by origin, 
 but to annex all regions, irrespective of race or language, of 
 which the possession is deemed useful to the power of the Hohen- 
 zollerns".^^ He says further that the doctrine is composed of 
 both economic and political cupidity. It is a scheme of piracy 
 to be carried on for the Prussian monarchy. Its object is by 
 successive and indefinite expansions of territory to include within 
 the same boundaries at first economically, but afterwards politi- 
 cally, such land and such peoples as are likely to prove a profitable 
 possession to the Hohenzollerns themselves and to the support of 
 German aristocracy.^^ He quotes as proof Richard Tannen- 
 berg's book, Grosse-Deutschland die Arbeit des 20. jahrhunderts 
 
 ^* Pan Germanic Doctrine, p. 13. 
 
 "Ibid., p. 14. 
 
 " Cheradame, The Pan Germanic Plot Unmasked (transl. and ed. by Lady 
 Fraser, London, 1917), p. 2. The author aims in this book to prove that the 
 Pangerman plot is the dominating cause of the war. She makes special use of 
 Grosse-Deutschland die Erbeit des 20. Jahrhunderts, drawing the conclusion 
 from this and other German documents that Germany had political designs with 
 reference to South America. It is an excellent and helpful expos6 of Germany's 
 plans. 
 
 " Ibid., p. 5. 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 591 
 
 (Greater Germany Work of the 20th Century) which appeared 
 in Leipsig in 1911. This book contains the exact program of 
 annexations to be made in Europe and Turkey by 1950, and also 
 the exact enumerations of protectorates to be established in 
 South America by that date.^^ 
 
 ''Germany," Tannenberg said, ''takes under her protection 
 the Republics of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, the south third 
 of Bolivia, as far as South Brazil in which German culture is 
 dominant." "German South America," he concludes, "will pro- 
 vide for us in the temperate zone a colonial region where our 
 emigrants will be able to settle as farmers. Chili and Argentina 
 will preserve their language and autonomy. But we shall 
 require that in the schools German shall be taught as a second 
 language. South Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay are countries 
 of German culture. German will there be the national 
 tongue."^^ 
 
 Thus Brazil played a part in a political as well as an economic 
 dream. The logical antecedent to Germany's means of realizing 
 these dreams is to be found in the fortunes of her colonization in 
 Brazil. German emigration to Brazil dates from the year 1825 
 when colonies were founded in Santa Catharina and Rio Grande 
 do Sul at the invitation of the Brazilian government. At first 
 Brazil was open only to Portuguese immigrants, but realizing 
 that it was necessary to counterbalance the black population by 
 the importation of white people and that Portugal was incapable 
 of sending a sufficiently large number of colonists to do this, the 
 government under Dom Pedro I. opened the country to immi- 
 grants other than Portuguese. ^^ As an inducement this govern- 
 ment provided passage for immigrants, transported them on 
 arrival far into the country, and provided them the first year 
 with a sum of money to be paid back when the first harvests 
 were gathered." 
 
 i8 76iU,p. 100. 
 
 ^' Ibid., p. 105. 
 
 2" E. Tonnelat, L'Expansion Allemande hors d' Europe (Paris, 1908), pp. 92-94. 
 This book contains articles on German expansion to the United States, Brazil, 
 Chantung, and South Africa. The article on Brazil is particularly valuable on 
 account of its concrete discussion of the first colonies in Brazil. 
 
 *' Pan Germanic Doctrine, p. 273. 
 
592 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 In 1849 the Hamburg Colonizing Association founded a colony 
 in Donna Francisca on the northern boundary of Santa Catha- 
 rina and a few years later the Blumenau colony was founded by 
 Dr. Blumenau of Brunswick. 22 Had Germany been awake to 
 its opportunities then, South Brazil might now have been 
 peopled by millions of well-to-do German farmers, but by the 
 Von der Heydt rescript of 1859 Germany closed South America 
 to German immigrants and therefore lost its great chance. As 
 a result of this edict Von der Heydt, the Prussian minister, 
 prohibited all propaganda in favor of immigration. ^^ Therefore 
 in 1874, when Brazil appealed to Germany to direct immigration 
 there, no response was made. Italy, however, when asked, sent 
 thousands. This bill was repealed in 1896. Germany, realizing 
 its great mistake, tried to make it good, and just at the time 
 when other nations were tacitly bowing to the Monroe Doc- 
 trine, began to organize its activity in Brazil. 2* The German 
 program comprised, (1) the colonization of South Brazil with 
 settlers who should remain German in language, trade, ideals, 
 and surroundings; (2) the expansion of German commerical, in- 
 dustrial, and financial activity, with control of the means of 
 communication both inland and oceanic; (3) the abandonment 
 or modification of the Monroe Doctrine by the United States, 
 which would then permit German economic predominance to be 
 txu-ned to political account without war.^^ 
 
 As regards the first part of this program Germany was ideally 
 successful, as is shown by the following statement in the Suda- 
 merikanische Rundschau, a Berlin paper devoted exclusively to 
 the furtherance of German interests in South America. ''North 
 America is not fitted for a rational emigration, for there the 
 peculiarities, language, and customs of the Germans, in other 
 words Germanism, are lost by way of assimilation. There the 
 
 " Ibid., p. 272. 
 
 *' Edgardo deMagalhaes, "Germany and South America," in Nineteenth Century 
 and after (New York, January, 1917), LXXXI. 67-80. This article, representing 
 the opinion of a Brazilian, gives a valuable concrete discussion of Germany's 
 activities in South America. 
 
 ** Pan Germanic Doctrine, p. 273. 
 
 '* Wile; op. cit. 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 593 
 
 relations of the emigrant with the mother country are dissolved ; 
 there he even promotes competition with the agriculture and 
 industry of his own native country. It is not so in South 
 America particularly in South Brazil. There German nationality 
 is preserved; there conditions for a prosperous existence are 
 better; there the German emigrant becomes a consumer of 
 German products of industry and in this way becomes an 
 intermediary of commercial and political relations between his 
 new home and his mother country, "^e 
 
 In South Brazil Germans became the leading citizens, being 
 found everywehre as local officials, merchants, pastors, teachers, 
 and artisans." Germans practically populated the state of 
 Santa Catharina. There one heard five times more German 
 spoken than Portuguese and saw such advertisements as "For 
 sale, first class land, on easy terms to Germans only.^^s in 
 numerous communities where this German element was prac- 
 tically exclusive, German self-government existed. Road build- 
 ing, irrigation, and general public utilities were all under German 
 supervision, and Germans were even permitted to maintain a 
 system of taxation for the support of exclusive German schools 
 and churches. There were several hundred of these schools in 
 South America, twenty in Santa Catharina alone. In Germany, 
 the ''Society for the Perpetuation of the German Language 
 Abroad" devoted funds to the endowment of these schools, 
 churches, and libraries in Brazil. Only in the external affairs of 
 the municipalities was it apparent that the country was 
 Brazilian.29 
 
 The German Mutual Protection Society, membership in which 
 was open to all persons of the German race, was an important 
 
 «« "German Expansion", in Outlook (New York, May, 1901), LCVIII. 15001. 
 This article in discussing German expansion quotes from an unnamed Berlin 
 newspaper and the Deutsche Post, both quotations proving valuable for the 
 above. 
 
 " Wile, op. cit. 
 
 ** C. N. Mackintosh, "German Aims in Southern Brazil", in South American 
 (New York, November, 1917). This article, which is taken from the River Plate 
 Observer, treats of the growth of the German colonies, their loyalty to their 
 native coimtry, and the possibility of a South American German empire. 
 
 "Wile, op. cit. and Tonnelat, op. cit., p. 118. 
 
594 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 organization in cementing the German element in Brazil and in 
 fostering a feeling of unity among Germans.^" This feeling was 
 further fostered by Lutheran pastors who came from Germany, 
 remained a few years, and, preaching a gospel of the divine 
 right of the emperor, carried on a German national movement, 
 as well as by local German newspapers edited and managed by 
 Germans, but more especially by the German clubs, the Vereinen 
 and the inevitable rifle clubs.^^ Incidentally these clubs became 
 the controlling centers of well-organized propaganda, and, care- 
 fully nurtured by the imperial government, proved a powerful 
 aid in fiu-thering the aims of the Fatherland. ^^ After the out- 
 break of the Great War it was proved that these rifle clubs 
 constituted a real military organization destined for future 
 conquest. Indeed 80,000 rifles were confiscated by the 
 government.^^ 
 
 The final aid to German nationalism was the Delbrtich law, 
 formulated by Hans Delbrtich, a distinguished professor of 
 history at Berlin,^^ and promulgated July 2, 1913. It is stated 
 in the preamble that 'Hhis law was made for the need of those 
 who relinquished their nationality in order to earn their living 
 in other countries." The second part of article 25 stated that 
 ''if any person before acquiring nationality in a foreign state 
 shall have received the written permission of a competent 
 authority of his native state to retain his nationality of that 
 state he shall not lose his nationality of the said native state. 
 The German consul shall be consulted before granting the said 
 permission." Thus by this provision a German could become 
 a naturalized subject of a foreign state and at the same time 
 enjoy for himself and his descendants all the rights of a German 
 citizen and all the protection of the German empire. ^^ 
 
 »•> Pan Germanic Doctrine, p. 286. 
 
 '* Magalhaes, op. cit. 
 
 3> Brasfortlu, "Germany and South Brazil", in The Spectator (London, Octo- 
 ber, 1918), CXVI. 375-376. This article gives a brief and clear exposition of 
 Germany in Brazil from 1892 to after the outbreak of the Great War, showing 
 by its concrete detail the aggressiveness and cupidity of the Germans. 
 
 '' Magalhaes, op. cit. 
 
 34 Barker, op. cit., p. 273. 
 
 36 Gh6radame, op. cit., p. 195. 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 595 
 
 Thus German nationality was secured in South Brazil and 
 success in the first part of the German program in that country 
 ideally realized. Germany was equally successful with the 
 second part of its program, namely, commercial, industrial, and 
 financial expansion. Acting upon the idea that the control of 
 communications was the most effective guarantee of economic 
 predominance, Germany secured control of the Brazilian carrying 
 trade. Its three great lines, the Hamburg American, the North 
 German Lloyd, and the Hamburg South American Steam Ship 
 Company divided the Atlantic frontage of Brazil into well 
 defined, non-conflicting sections and centralized commerce in 
 their hands. '^ Germany also secured a monopoly of tonnage, 
 lighterage, and water transportation in general, and attempted 
 to secure control of inland communications by sending out 
 numerous exploring expeditions, which were to be followed by 
 the construction of pioneer railways. Dr. Karl Von Steinen's 
 expedition into West Brazil was of this type, for it was followed 
 up by the construction of the Rio Grande Northwest Railway." 
 It has been suggested that this latter activity was strongly 
 reminiscent of the devices used by Russia to break the way for 
 political aggrandisement along the Russo-Asiatic frontier. ^^ 
 
 Through German banking houses, especially the Brazilian 
 Bank of Germany, Germany considerably developed its trade 
 and industry in Brazil. In all the busy trade centers of Central 
 and North, as well as South, Brazil, the German flag waved over 
 important commercial establishments whose headquarters were 
 either in Berlin or Hamburg.^^ In short, Germany entered every 
 field of economic activity in Brazil and was preeminent in most. 
 
 Having secured national and economic predominance in South 
 Brazil, Germany revealed the next step in a significant editorial 
 
 ^8 Wile, op. cit. 
 
 " Bonsai, op. cit. 
 
 ^^ Frederick Austin Ogg, "German Interests and Tendencies in South 
 America", in World's Work (New York, March, 1903), I. p. 169. This is a compre- 
 hensive sketch of German designs with reference to South America. It gives a 
 detailed and particularly significant interpretation of the German exploring 
 expeditions in South America. 
 
 ^^ Wile, op. cit. 
 
596 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 in the Deutsche Post, ''we observe that a love for the individual 
 states is growing at the expense of Brazil's unity. We should 
 not wonder if, especially in consequence of mal-administration 
 at Rio Janeiro, the Federal capital, the states of Parana, Santa 
 Catharina, and Rio Grande do Sul at least some day should 
 declare for secession and independence. Then a new outlook 
 would be open to Germany."*" Thus a situation might have 
 arisen in which these states would suddenly consider themselves 
 misgoverned, as the Deutsche Post suggested, and they would 
 then appeal to Berlin for redress by force of arms and for future 
 protection. Perhaps that protection could be secured only by 
 placing the colonists and their territory under the German flag. 
 But here Germany would encounter the Monroe Doctrine, the 
 abandonment or modification of which formed the third and 
 most vital part of the German program. 
 
 Germany failed in accomplishing this last part of its program, 
 though German rulers and writers called the Monroe Doctrine an 
 "empty pretension". Hugo Mtinsterberg, a professor of Har- 
 vard University, in his book. The Americans even cited it as the 
 cause for a future war between the United States and Europe, 
 saying: ''The Yankee will soon realize the folly and error of 
 his arguments. ... If South America were set free from 
 this tutelage, if its bearing were limited to Central America, the 
 possibilities of a conflict between the United States and Europe 
 would be considerably diminished".'*^ 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine, as is well known, virtually asserted that 
 henceforth the Americas were not to be regarded as fields for 
 future colonization, that European countries must not extend 
 their monarchial systems here, and that they must refrain from 
 interfering in general with the new republics. Thus this doctrine 
 by its very nature, backed by the force of the United States, was 
 the greatest obstacle in the way of Germany's realizing its 
 
 *" "German Expansion", op. cit. 
 
 *i Francisco Garcia-Calder6n, Latin America: Its Rise and Progress (New 
 York, 1915), p. 294. The author, a young Peruvian in the diplomatic service, 
 aims to set forth in this book the entire evolution of the South American Re- 
 publics. He devotes an excellent chapter to a discussion of the "GermanPeril", 
 stating what it is and why it cannot be realized. 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 597 
 
 politico-economic dream of a Greater Germany in South America. 
 Another obstacle was found in the Brazilians themselves, for they 
 recognized in the German's determination to remain German 
 in everything but formal citizenship a decided peril to their 
 country. Ruy Barbosa, the great liberal of Brazil, in an address 
 to the federal congress at Rio de Janeiro referred scathingly to 
 this organized, unyielding foreign invasion, and alleged that 
 through it South Brazil was undergoing gradual, but thorough, 
 denationaHzation.*2 Dr. Murtinho, the most prominent pub- 
 licist in Brazil, also set forth the danger in a stirring speech, 
 calling upon his countrymen to stand shoulder to shoulder in 
 defense of their nationality.^^ 
 
 Thus, although Germany dreamed of a Greater Germany in 
 Brazil, and although that dream was realized to the extent of 
 the German colonists becoming nationally and economically 
 predominant, the great plan was doomed to final failure by the 
 Monroe Doctrine, the resistance of the Brazilians, and finally 
 by the relatively small German population in Brazil, for the 
 400,000 or more colonists (Parana, 60,000 Germans; Santa 
 Catharina, 170,000; Rio Grande do Sul, 220,000) were lost in 
 the national mass of 19,000,000 Brazilians. But the definite 
 aspirations of Germany in Brazil proved a vital force in 
 determining Brazil's role in the Great War. 
 
 At first Brazil diligently strove to maintain a policy of neu- 
 trality toward all belligerents, but this was very difficult for 
 several reasons. In the first place the remarkable ascendancy 
 which French culture exerted over many Brazilian thinkers was 
 a potent influence in ranging public opinion on the side of the 
 Allies, and this was reinforced by the entrance of the mother 
 country, Portugal, into the war. In the second place, in Rio de 
 Janeiro the Brazilian capital, public sentiment was overwhelm- 
 ingly against the Germans. This sentiment was aggravated by 
 rumors of wireless stations being erected on the south coast of 
 Brazil by German sympathizers and of fishing smacks spying 
 upon the movements of English steamships, but particularly by 
 
 *^ Wile, op. cit. 
 " Bonsai, op. cit. 
 
598 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 the German newspapers, which tried to counteract and contra- 
 dict all news favorable to the Allies and freely expressed German 
 hopes concerning Brazil in the event of a German victory.^* 
 
 The actual declaration of war was brought about by the 
 torpedoing of the Brazilian ships Parana and Macau by German 
 U-boats, and by the Luxburg dispatches, which revealed a plot 
 to violate Brazilian sovereignty by consolidating the German 
 settlement in Brazil. These dispatches were made known to 
 the Brazilian authorities by Secretary Lansing. As is well 
 known, they had been sent to the German foreign office by 
 Count Luxburg, German Charge d' Affaires of the Argentine 
 Legation.45 But perhaps the underlying and goading force back 
 of this declaration of war was the fear that Germany would some 
 day plant a colonial empire in Brazil, for it had long been 
 ■evident that ''the Hohenzollerns will begin their fight for a place 
 in the Hispanic American sun by entering her southern prov- 
 ince, where a colony of over 400,000 Germans, who have never 
 allowed themselves to be Brazilian to the slightest extent, are 
 waiting to receive the Vaterland with open arms".''^ At Rio de 
 Janeiro no secret was made of the fact that it was for protection 
 against Germany that the two great dreadnoughts Minas Geraes 
 and Sao Paulo were built ten years ago and at the same time a 
 universal military service law was enacted.*'' Ruy Barbosa in 
 
 ^^ William Spence Robertson, "The Position of Brazil", in Nation (New- 
 York, February 22, 1917), CIV. 208-209. This is an elucidating article setting 
 forth Brazil's quandary, whether or not to enter the Great War. It contains 
 two interesting quotations from speeches made by Ruy Barbosa showing his 
 realization of the German peril in Brazil after the war should the Germans prove 
 victorious. 
 
 ^* "Brazil at War", in New York Times Current History (New York, Decem- 
 ber, 1917), VII. pt. I. 439-440. This article contains an account of Brazil's 
 declaration of war, and the reproduction of two dispatches sent by Count 
 Luxburg to the foreign office. 
 
 *^ Frederick Bliss Luquiens, "Latin America and the War", in Century Maga- 
 zine (New York, October, 1918), XCVI. 859-864. This article explains the 
 Hispanic American Countries' attitude towards the Great War, weighing in the 
 balance the pro-Ally elements and the pro-German elements. 
 
 *' "Brazil's Interest in the War", in North American Review (New York, 
 March, 1918), CCVII. 339-342. This article gives an excellent discussion of 
 the German peril in Brazil and the reasons for Brazilian entrance into the war, 
 ^stressing particularly the fear of Germany. 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 699 
 
 a stirring speech delivered in the municipal theater in Rio de 
 Janeiro made these designs one basis of an appeal to the 
 Brazilians to revoke their neutrality, saying: "The juridical 
 questions of the present war and the burning problem of neu- 
 trality afford common ground for all America, especially South 
 America where is found on Teutonic maps a South Germany. 
 . . . If the Central Powers are victorious in this war the 
 German nation, intoxicated by pride of the triumph, with 
 Europe prostrate at her feet, will not hesitate to settle accounts 
 with the United States and violating the Monroe Doctrine, 
 which the United States has not the means to preserve, will 
 proceed to obtain in South America those regions which the 
 cartography of Pan Germanism has often designated as the 
 natural seat of her leonine sovereignty. Such is my mature, 
 profound, and liberal conviction". ^^ Strangely enough this 
 speech of Barbosa's echoed one made by the German Admiral 
 Von Goetz to Admiral Dewey in 1898, in which Von Goetz 
 said: ''About fifteen years from now my country will start a 
 great war. She will be in Paris about two months after the 
 commencement of hostilities. Her move on Paris will be but a 
 step to her real project, the crushing of England. Some months 
 after we finish our work in Europe, we will take New York and 
 probably Washington. . . . The Monroe Doctrine will be 
 taken charge of by us and we will dispose of South America as 
 we wish".^^ 
 
 Thus the German element in Brazil with its aggressive pro- 
 German propaganda and its great potentialities proved a vital 
 factor in causing Brazil's decision to enter the war against 
 Germany. The Great War brought German political designs 
 with reference to Brazil well into the foreground and the issue 
 was presented clearly and forcefully to such Brazilian leaders 
 as Ruy Barbosa. But the realization of those designs was 
 destroyed forever by the outcome of the conflict. 
 
 LORETTA BaUM. 
 
 ** Robertson, op. cit. 
 
 *9 Edward Perry, "The New World after the War", in South American (New 
 York, January, 1918). This article sets forth the political, financial, and com- 
 mercial problems confronting the statesmen of Hispanic America. It refers to the 
 German designs in South America urging the reality of these designs. 
 
600 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 The following excerpt is taken from an undated manuscript in the 
 Library of Congress by R. Cleary, A.M., M.D., entitled "Brazil under 
 the Monarchy. A record of Facts and Observations, From notes 
 taken in Brazil during a period of more than twenty years". Its 
 author, who was married to a German woman in Brazil, exercised his pro- 
 fession in the country, and appears to have had an excellent opportunity 
 to study the people and country. What he says of German colonization 
 in Brazil is of interest in connection with Miss Baum's article. — J. A. R. 
 
 Chap. Ill 
 Colonization. Foreigners in Brazil and their social status 
 
 Perhaps it is well to commence with the vital question of Coloniza- 
 tion in Brazil under the Empire. The writers on Brazil alluded to in 
 the last chapter as interested speculators are those who published 
 exaggerated and glowing accounts of the country to aid the expensive 
 and imbecile scheme of German Colonization which at an enormous 
 and extraordinary outlay, introduced fifty-two thousand immigrants in 
 fifty-two years; "by their fruits shall ye know them," and this official 
 result ought to be enough to condemn the whole fabric, but facts and 
 figures are too weak to force the harpy from his prey, though the 
 Republicans, and the better classes of the land not in the Government, 
 made themselves heard incessantly against the iniquitous expenditures 
 of the public funds to fee the supporters of an effete government. 
 
 Certain contractors, such as Pinto and Holtzwessig of Porto Alegre, 
 received from the Imperial Government fifteen dollars a head for 
 colonists, without regard to their quality, and for a long time, so long 
 as the speculation paid, these worthy contractors succeeded in emptying 
 European jails (if we may believe the contemporaneous newspapers 
 on both sides of the Atlantic), and inducing the most ignorant of the 
 farm laborers and vagabonds of Germany to go to the Brazilian Utopia, 
 where disappointment and disgust awaited them, and in too many 
 cases, a life of misery and hard labor crowned their efforts to extract a 
 living from the sterile hills, swampy bottoms, and dried plains of South 
 Brazil. Not that there is not a great deal of fairly good land through- 
 out that section, but it is all taken up by the natives and the new- 
 comers have only the reversion of the refuse (the "refuga" the people 
 called it) . Nor do I mean to say that all the Germans there are of the 
 character above stated, but the great mass of them are, and their 
 progress proves it. 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 601 
 
 On the arrival of Colonists, by the regulations of the Imperial Gov- 
 ernment, they were consigned, without much choice in the matter, to 
 the different colonies or settlements on the public domain, under the 
 tender mercies of an Imperial Director, who, according to law, managed 
 to keep them for years in the worst kind of servitude, I mean debt, 
 working on the rudimentary roads at the cheapest rates, to assist the 
 poor results of their agricultural labors, and thus to be able to poorly 
 sustain their famiUes, until no more could be squeezed from the poor 
 colonist, when, to use the very words of the law, they were manumitted. 
 Many and many times I have seen these poor men in the Colony of 
 Taguary, and of the Cedro, and Rancho Queimado, and elsewhere, 
 laboring on the almost vertical hillsides of the rough country of Sta. 
 Catharina, scratching up the sparse soil to plant a few beans in order 
 to feed their children, and all under a vertical boihng sun. It makes 
 my heart ache to remember it. As a proof of the unfitness of the 
 large majority of the German colonists, take the fact that in the large 
 and much praised colony of S. Leopoldo in Rio Grande do Sul, which 
 today counts perhaps some twenty-five thousand souls or more, though 
 they have been settled there for more than fifty years, they have made 
 no real progress, nor have they introduced anything new, except a 
 wretched quahty of undrinkable small beer, and a villainously sour 
 wine, but in general plant only what they found amongst the Bra- 
 zilians on their arrival, and exactly in the same Adanioc manner. I 
 knew an Irishman in Porto Alegre, Scotchman he called himself, as if 
 the latter was more honorable than the former, in the province of 
 Rio Grande do Sul, who tried in vain to introduce amongst the 
 Germans the general use of ploughs: they would not accept them, 
 but preferred hoes and spades, and in the great majority of cases, 
 sticks, to make holes with in the ground, for seeds. This remark needs 
 explanation, and certainly our agricultural laborers will look aghast 
 when they learn that a great part of the cultivation is performed with 
 the hoe, in rare instances with the spade, and this only when the farmer 
 has had his eyes opened enough to abandon the regular custom of 
 making a hole in the ground with a stick, dropping therein the seed, and 
 covering it by a scrape of his foot. It is true, as above stated, that a 
 few, a very few, used the spade, which is but a poor substitute for that 
 grand symbol of civilization, the last perfected work of Tubal Cain, 
 the saviour of the world, the plough. Why is it that such abnormities 
 are not found amongst us? Is it not because we are not paternally 
 cared for by such a paternal government as that of the Empire, when 
 
602 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 the protective system entered everywhere; nothing was too minute for 
 it, and the colonists, or Brazihan laborers, were saved the trouble of 
 thinking for themselves, and had to serve as contributors to the wealth 
 of their masters. Many Brazihan gentlemen have complained to me 
 of this state of things. 
 
 There are thousands and thousands of these people, bom in the coun- 
 try, who speak neither the vernacular tongue of the land, nor correct 
 German, and as a consequence, as a rule, the authorities over them were 
 Brazilian Imperialists. They never had their due proportion of represen- 
 tation in the National or Provincial councils, and only once in a while, 
 (once that I know of) a German entirely Imperialized would be elected 
 to serve without influence. . Thus they were at the mercy of agents 
 grossly ignorant and bitterly bigoted, who despised, envied, and 
 Qppressed them, whose only recommendations were their. partisanship 
 for the monarchy. Allemao became a word of reproach, and Alle- 
 maozinho (little German, meaning a man born in the country of German 
 parents) was always an alien even to the third generation, and was 
 never considered equal to his Portuguese descended fellow country- 
 men, even when they were of the stock of slave-hunters mixed with 
 negroes from the African coast. There are a few, alas a very few, 
 exceptions to the above rule, where the intelhgent German colonists 
 learned the language of the land, and passed a tranquil life almost 
 free from persecutions and disgusts; and also there were many Bra- 
 zilians, better informed, and generally republicans, who fully compre- 
 hended the question, but unfortunately they could not lift the weight 
 of governmental pressure which kept them down, and thus were 
 totally powerless to instruct the badly disposed of their fellow country- 
 men, or to repress the tendencies of the ignorant that judged them- 
 selves offended in their rights and interests by the superiority of the 
 more intelligent of the foreigners, and the preference they sometimes 
 received from the more advanced of the natives. I say sometimes, 
 for the preference was so unpopular with the masses, that it required 
 some courage to exercise it, more indeed, than will be generally found 
 anywhere. This state of things, of course, brought about, amongst a 
 people held forcibly in ignorance by the government of the Empire, 
 a steady and a sturdy opposition to foreigners, and hence immigrants 
 were not received with open arms, not even when they were Portu- 
 guese; nor even with indifference at all times, but they too frequently 
 encountered repulsive and insulting gestures, threatening looks, and 
 sometimes curses, all of which I have witnessed in Porto Alegre. They 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 603 
 
 say that the foreigner goes to Brazil to "ganhar a nosso dinheiro" (to 
 earn our money), a common expression which every Brazilian will 
 recognize at once. 
 
 Besides the impotent and expensive provisions of the government 
 for colonization, they have committed the grave error of allowing 
 their exaggerated nationaUsm to become too apparent even in the legis- 
 lative halls of the country. A well known and much esteemed delegate 
 in the National Assembly, amidst the enthusiastic applause of his 
 fellow monarchists declared that "we ought to preserve the national 
 sentiment against foreignerism," and also that the said foreignerism 
 "invades and smothers the country" — which burst of eloquence was 
 utterly condemned by every Republican in the land. 
 
 Such sentiments "out-Herod Herod," and withal, there are men 
 who tell us of the friendly hospitality of Imperial Brazil; it is perfectly 
 absurd to so distort facts, and though the Imperialists would feign and 
 cringe when it was to their interest or shame so to do, they felt nothing 
 but apprehension of freer ideas from foreigners, and in consequence, a 
 malicious repulsion, which was an eternal stopper on the progress of 
 the land. In the words of the most respected and wealthy merchant 
 (a German) in the Province of Sta. Catharina, "you may be a murderer, 
 a robber, a swindler, anything, but do not be a foreigner in Brazil when 
 you sue out a question with the government." This gentleman, 
 together with almost aU the other Germans in the provincial capital, 
 formed a society apart, and lived as much separated from the Bra- 
 zilians as possible. I have found this the practice in every part of 
 Brazil I have visited, the foreigners forming colonies apart, and so 
 slow was the process of amalgamation that it hardly existed at all. 
 And here let me state that once in a while could be found a monarchist 
 who would lift up his voice against the colonization abuses and work 
 hard for a reform and denounce the errors or injustice of the government 
 even in the legislative halls. Senator Jaunay was one of these bright 
 exceptions, but even he became less enthusiastic after he became a 
 senator. dwncioit LSbnxf 
 
 I am today persuaded that the great mass of the Brazilians of the 
 present generation are indifferent if not hostile to the colonists whom 
 they need, and that they are always dissatisfied when a foreigner 
 emerges from a lower level, and that they only wish for immigrants as 
 substitutes for the freed slaves, to perform the hardest labor, a wish 
 that fortunately is difficult to realize. The case could hardly be 
 otherwise with a jealous people, whose instruction had been neglected 
 
604 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 by the government, and who were kept in error, apparently, purposely 
 to keep them besotted, in their docility to their grasping masters. 
 Do not blame the poor people, blame their Imperial governors! 
 
 When the peculiar management of the German colonists daily 
 proved more and more abortive, and it became palpable that slavery 
 was fast dying out, in spite of the experience of more energetic races, 
 they commenced using every effort to inflict the curse of Chinese labor 
 upon their unhappy land. 
 
 It is hard to believe that Brazil, a country almost as large as Europe, 
 and fairly favored by nature, was created by God and then discovered 
 by Columbus and Cabral merely as an asylum for the offshoots of one 
 of the smallest and most insignificant monarchies of Europe, and the 
 descendants of the imported African negroes. That little backward 
 monarchy is today nearly exhausted of its superfluous population, and 
 perhaps because it is rich in colonies, it can not furnish sufficient emi- 
 grants for Brazil; the six thousand who go from there to Brazil annually 
 form but a drop in the sea and is insignificant as a mode of increasing 
 the population; moreover, the African fountain is happily dried up 
 forever. As for Germany, England, Italy, France, and Austria, they 
 have shown themselves hostile to the emigration of their subjects to 
 Brazil, on account of the unhappy state of affairs narrated above, 
 and because the children of those nations have derived no sterling 
 benefit in the "land of the Holy Cross," whilst on the contrary, a fair 
 proportion of the Portuguese immigrants have always done well, many 
 of them exceedingly well; because they receive no favors or subsidies 
 from the government, and besides they are more closely alhed to their 
 new fellowcountrymen than other foreigners; they assimilate with the 
 natives more easily, they speak the same language, they have the same 
 religion and traditions, and become the fathers of what are considered 
 genuine Brazilians. Yet even the Portuguese have been roughly treated 
 for the crime of being foreigners, especially and notoriously in Pernam- 
 buco. The better class of them were monarchists to a man, which is 
 not the case with most of the other foreigners. I can not express the 
 popular sentiment on this subject under monarchical teachings better 
 than in the following words of a caustic sarcastic writer in Rio de 
 Janeiro on the subject. 
 
 "The Portuguese are the only foreigners who possess well sounding 
 names; this is what, in truth, is desired, and nothing else, except to 
 perpetuate the State and the actual population. We want no intrusion 
 of foreigners with barbarous names, which are less melodious than 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 605 
 
 our own; we want no people who do not belong to our own land, and 
 above all, we do not want the children of Protestant foreigners to seat 
 themselves with us at the banquet of fifty-three thousand dollars 
 (public funds expended); we have advanced well enough without a 
 deluge of intruding and unnecessary foreigners, and forward still! Let 
 us feign to want them as heretofore, Brazil is great enough for the 
 Brazihans!" If it were not for the black shadow of the monarchy, in 
 a land rich enough in general if well cultivated, enormous would have 
 been the number of emigrants to its shores, helped by favorable ad- 
 ministration of the laws, and a friendly reception on an equal footing. 
 If it were not so, the owner of an illustrious name would not have 
 cried aloud in the periodical The Aurora, No. 3, April, 1863, against 
 Brazil's occupation of the lowest place in the Ust of nations, etc., etc. 
 
 Knowing well his country and the circumstances of the case, and 
 that the immigrants who have reached the country have failed to impel 
 it forward on the road to a more advanced civihzation, and contemplating 
 a heterogeneous population of more than ten millions of people, and 
 knowing to what an extent the sycophantism of the Empire benumbed 
 progress, the inteUigent writer in The Aurora could arrive at no other 
 conclusion. 
 
 The wise government of the Prince von Bismarck, correctly informed 
 in the case, prohibited the shameless seduction of the lower orders of 
 its subjects into emigration to Brazil, under heavy penalties, and 
 cherishing the interests of the poor people, it is to be hoped that one 
 day such exodi will cease entirely.* Then the contractors tried for 
 any and every kind of material: Russians, Tyrolese, NeapoUtans, 
 French, etc., etc., and God keep those who fall into the snares of these 
 blood-sucking speculators. 
 
 EFFECTS OF GERMAN COLONIZATION. CECARACTER OF COLONISTS. 
 
 MUCKERS. CIVIL EMPLOYMENTS. IRISH COLONISTS. FRENCH 
 
 AND RUSSIAN COLONISTS. CHINESE LABOR. ITALIANS. 
 
 Though German colonization is in the condition I have stated, if not 
 worse, Brazil, in spite of the narrow-miaded poUcy of the Imperial 
 Government, owes very much to the Germans, as many of the principal 
 professional men, merchants, and artisans; and in the South, the best 
 of the bad cultivators of the soil, are of that nation; and by their inteUi- 
 gence, industry, and talents, have made their mark so indelibly, that it 
 
 * This was written in imperial times. 
 
606 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 is impossible to describe anything commendable there, without includ- 
 ing the industrious people under consideration; yet as far as I have 
 conversed with them, to a man, they condemn the odious system of 
 colonization in practice, unless one or another who is deriving profit 
 from speculation in the flesh and blood of his own countrymen. The 
 only woolen goods factory in the South is in Rio Grande do Sul, and is 
 a very large and flourishing concern which supports some hundreds of 
 people, and is the German factory of Rheinganz & Co. 
 
 Thus much in favor of the Germans and no more, for their peculiar 
 clannish prejudices, and unwilHngness to learn of others, have ever 
 prevented them from being successful colonists, even under the most 
 favorable circumstances, nor as a body have they ever radically 
 benefitted those countries to which they have emigrated. 
 
 Their one great industry is industry, but plodding industry, which 
 in Brazil in the midst of stagnant surroundings, has not advanced one 
 jot beyond what was its condition in the beginning, except such ad- 
 vancement as naturally resulted from increased numbers. Just as 
 they introduced "Anarchists" into the United States, they introduced 
 "Muckerism" into Brazil. The Muckers, as the respectable Germans 
 called the fanatics, were a gang of soi-disant religionists who appeared 
 in the Country of Sao Leopoldo in the year 1874, under the apparent 
 leadership of a woman, named Jacobina, an old soldier, one Andre Tup- 
 per, and Einsfeldt, a blacksmith, though they were all moved to action 
 by a fanatic person named Klein. This Klein had been in the United 
 States, and failed to do well, and went to Porto Alegre, and taking 
 advantage of the ignorance of the colonists, soon found suitable instru- 
 ments and formed a new religion after the model of Johan von Leiden 
 and KnipperdoUing, and improved on Mormonism. Jacobina was 
 Prophetess or Christ as she called herself, and the sect soon numbered 
 more than 250 persons. They abolished marriage, and as a substitute, 
 arranged a solemn ceremony to finish up their regular religious exercises. 
 The lights in the temple would be extinguished, and the congregation 
 left in utter darkness, when they would dance around the building 
 until all was confused, when each man would seize the nearest woman 
 for his happy partner. 
 
 In order to revenge a desertion from their sect, Einsfeldt murdered 
 a young man in the main street of Sao Leopoldo in broad daylight, 
 and fled; he, it appears, being the "Danite" of the Muckers. This 
 was going too far, and the Imperial authorities who had all along been 
 very indifferent about the business, sent to arrest Einsfeldt, but failed 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 607 
 
 to do SO. In the end they sent 600 infantry and four pieces of artillery 
 against the Muckers, and after losing several men and officers including 
 their commander, this httle army managed to capture all that were 
 left aUve of the twenty-seven who had resisted. Klein and Einsfeldt 
 were tried; Klein was acquitted for want of evidence, and Einsfeldt 
 by one of the tricks usual in Imperial Courts of Justice: there were 
 some eight or ten witnesses who had seen him going to Sao Leopoldo, 
 but he produced seventy who swore they had not seen him, and the jury 
 was instructed to accept this testimony, and it did so and acquitted him. 
 This was Muckerism. 
 
 The only public employment open to men of foreign birth in South 
 Brazil was that of Surveyor of the Colonial Lands, who were charged 
 also with opening the mule tracks called roads in the colonies. These 
 positions are mostly filled by Germans who united with some of their 
 Brazilian colleagues and made war on all other foreigners, except now 
 and then a Frenchman who, having family connections amongst the 
 people of the country, could not be ousted. 
 
 Perhaps I may appear somewhat discursive, but I am taking the 
 facts from my notes as they come, and they will as well be understood 
 thus as in a better form. 
 
 In the Province of Santa Catharina there are colonies or parts of 
 colonies, which have been abandoned, as the land is very mountainous, 
 heavily wooded and without proper communications, and the soil not 
 being more than of a very ordinary quality, only with the most severe 
 labor will it yield a bare subsistence to those who work it. When the 
 land is more flat, it is subject to floods frequently, and the whole 
 country swarms with vermin, such as ants, rats, locusts, birds, etc., 
 and so it goes. Besides these drawbacks colonists and their families, 
 men, but generally women and children were frequently murdered by 
 the Indians : not a year passed without several of those cases occurring, 
 yet the Imperial Government serenely smiled indifferent to the suffer- 
 ing and misery of its own guests. I remember a peculiarly touching 
 case at Taguary : a poor colonist sent three of his children, a girl of 14 
 years, and two little tots to a planted field some few hundred yards 
 from his house, when the Indians came up and after horribly muti- 
 lating the two eldest, murdered them; the youngest escaped by hiding 
 under a bush. The poor father in despair, broke up and went back 
 to Germany, and the Imperial authorities did nothing. 
 
 As an example of the working of the Imperial system (and note that 
 almost every person not of the government party or employ in the 
 
608 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 land was opposed to it) take the fact that in August of the year 1879, 
 some hundreds of people from an Italian colony, in a body, abandoned 
 the model colony of Itajahy in the Province of Santa Catharina, and 
 returned to their homes in disgust, protesting strongly in the public 
 newspapers against the bad treatment they had suffered, and the 
 deceptions practiced on them by the Imperial officers. This soon 
 became -a party question and for weeks the newspapers were filled 
 with long articles attacking or defending the Imperial Director, various 
 reasons having been given as the cause of the exodus. In fine the 
 debate was taken up by the National Assembly, who with the usual 
 lucidity which characterized that body under the Empire, failed to 
 arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, whilst the cause was as apparent as 
 the day to outside observers. It was the natural outcome of an 
 attempt to force arbitrary Imperial measures on a hasty and impetuous 
 people, which had been often successfully tried with others more docile 
 and more helpless in such a case. 
 
 Such outbreaks amongst the colonists were continually occurring, as 
 the Imperial Director almost invariably swindled them in their pay- 
 ments and once in a while the authorities would send a military force 
 to hold them in order. 
 
 Such after the war in the United States, a colony of so-called 
 Americans was formed near Blumenau in the same Province; it was 
 composed almost in its entirety of Irish, many of them ex-soldiers from 
 the two armies, who soon quarreled with the Director, rowed with the 
 Imperial authorities, and abandoned the colony one by one, until not 
 an Irishman remained to tell the tale. 
 
 Near Curityba in the Province of Parand, was formed a French 
 colony, and in less than two years afterwards, I passed through the 
 place, and saw the empty houses which had been abandoned by the 
 colonists, and a dreary commentary it was on the Imperial system of 
 colonization: roofs fallen in, grass growing on the hearthstones, the 
 ruined huts being shelters for vermin, and the buzzards in flocks 
 brooding over the picture of wretchedness. I knew of two other 
 failures in the same province. At Assungu, on the richest and fairest 
 public lands in the Empire, a colony was founded in 1867 or 8, and 
 now it presents a more dreary appearance than the French colonial 
 site above mentioned; not even the ruins are to be discovered. 
 
 And in 1879, the government imported a lot of long coated Russian 
 peasants to start a colony in the Province of Parand, but hardly had 
 they landed when the row commenced, they positively refusing to the 
 
GERMAN POLITICAL DESIGNS 609 
 
 least insolence, and now it is hard to find one of them. Well did the 
 Imperial authorities know these facts, and after such constant failures 
 it was concluded that a docile race was necessary for success, and as a 
 "dernier ressort," the Liberal (?) Prime Minister of Brazil, Mr. Sinimbu, 
 in September of the year 1879, recommended a measure which was 
 fatuously believed would sustain the large landed proprietors by fur- 
 nishing them slaves or their substitutes to take the place of the negroes 
 who were rapidly becoming enfranchised. He proposed the acquisition 
 of Chinese labor by contract, singularly ignoring American and Enghsh 
 experience, singularly ignoring the fact that he would thus repel 
 European labor from the Brazilian shores, and singularly ignoring that he 
 would thus give a fearful blow at the national progress, but this question 
 was most ably treated by the talented editor of the "Rio News" in the 
 number of October 15th, 1879, to which I would refer those who would 
 wish to continue the sickening question. 
 
 After many imbecile failures, as will be readily understood from the 
 foregoing pages, at last, in the eighth decade of the century, the Im- 
 perial Government, noting the refusal of the United States to receive 
 them promiscuously, succeeded in inducing some thousands of Itahans 
 to come to their country as colonists, and to this end large sums of 
 money and immense misrepresentations were expended. But the 
 treatment of these people was so negligent, not to say barbarous, that 
 numbers of them demanded to be sent back again, and numbers de- 
 serted Brazil and went on to the La Plata River. The colony of 
 "Rodrigo da Silva," as well as several other points in the interior, was 
 in a state of revolution because of bad treatment and impossibility to 
 obtain payment for work done for the government. In one place they 
 paraded the streets demanding food to save them from starvation, 
 and threatened to sack the town if the people did not do something 
 to appease their hunger. A military force was sent there, and with 
 this and temporarily giving them some coarse food, they were quieted 
 enough to be dispersed, over the land to die, if they chose, singly; 
 what cared the Imperial Government! Many were crowded into 
 small, unhealthy, and badly fitted coast steamers and sent off to the 
 southern provinces, many dying on the voyage from filth and neglect, 
 and for those who reached their destination, the same neglect and 
 wretchedness awaited them, so that hundreds became beggars in the 
 streets of the towns, so much so that the Rio Grande newspapers 
 made a vain and great outcry against this foul inhuman abuse. The 
 military escorted 266 of them prisoners from the interior to Rio de 
 
610 THE HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW 
 
 Janeiro, because they had revolted against the Imperial Director who 
 failed to pay them for work done and left them to starve. 
 
 In Rio de Janeiro in May, 1889, hundreds were wandering through 
 the streets, and begging alms, sleeping at night in that pest ridden 
 city in doorways or on the side walks, or in the public parks. Under the 
 office of the British Consulate in D. Manoce Street was a place for 
 extending the imperial national hospitality to these invited guests; it 
 was an old warehouse without windows or flooring, where some hun- 
 dreds of men, women, and children were pigged together, in all their 
 filth and wretchedness, without beds or clothing, and allowed to starve, 
 that is those who were too sick to march off to a bakery and receive 
 one small piece of bread as a daily allowance. Mr. Nicolini, the British 
 Consul, told me that the stench was terrible, and that one day he saw 
 three dead bodies carried out; and also that one poor woman whose milk 
 had dried for want of food complained that her babe was starving, 
 when the imperial pohceman on duty threatened to take her off to 
 jail if she did not be quiet. 
 
 These are only a very few of the hardships to which these poor 
 people were subjected, and if any one should imagine the picture 
 exaggerated, he can refer to the daily newspapers of Rio of the time. 
 The Paiz, the Republican paper, was particularly interesting, 
 especially for the date, 4th May, 1889. 
 
RETURN TO the circulation desk of any 
 
 University of California Library 
 
 or to the 
 
 NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 BIdg. 400, Richmond Field Station 
 University of California 
 Richmond, CA 94804-4698 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 2-month loans may be renewed by calling 
 
 (510) 642-6753 
 1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books 
 
 to NRLF 
 Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days 
 
 prior to due date 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 APR 1 8 1995 
 
 '^tTURNED 
 
 itJSRTslggs 
 
 Sarrta Cruz Jftney 
 
 20,000 (4/94)