Tensions Over the Borders: Brazilian Slavery and the Causes of Paraguayan War

Date: 

Thursday, February 22, 2018, 12:00pm to 2:00pm

Location: 

CGIS South, S050, 1730 Cambridge Street

323px-lancero_de_la_epoca_de_rivera.png

Speaker: Keila Grinberg, Associate Professor, History Department, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO); Andrés Bello Visiting Professor, New York University

The causes of the Paraguay war (1864-1870) have been debated ever since the war ended, and remain controversial among historians. In this presentation, Prof. Grinberg will discuss the ways in which the presence of Brazilian slavery on the border with Uruguay affected international relations between the countries of the La Plata region in the nineteenth century, contributing fundamentally to the growing tensions that led to the beginning of the war.

Keila Grinberg is an Associate Professor of History at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and a researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, Brazil). She has been a visiting professor at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan, and a Tinker Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. She is currently King Juan Carlos Chair at New York University (Spring 2018). Her books include Liberata (1994), Código civil e cidadania (2001), O fiador dos brasileiros: cidadania, escravidão e direito civil no tempo de Antonio Pereira Rebouças (2002, currently being translated into English). Her new project examines nineteenth century cases of kidnapping and illegal enslavement on the southern Brazilian border and their larger effects on the making of South American international relations. With Hebe Mattos and Martha Abreu, she is currently directing the public digital history project "Pasts Presents: memories of slavery in Brazil".

Presented in collaboration with the History Department at Harvard University.

Photo: Portrait of a Lanceiro Negro, oil by Juan Manuel Blanes