Brazil

Joel Wolfe

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781509547760, 9781509547753
• eBook ISBN: 9781509547777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Brazil has long been an enigma to outsiders. Over the last two decades alone, Latin America's largest and most populous country has been celebrated as a vibrant new democracy with a powerful economy, and derided as a nation in complete disarray heading toward the status of a failed state.

In this vibrant and smart book, Joel Wolfe tells the story of this "incomplete nation" and its two-hundred-year-old struggle to control its vast national territory and to fashion and maintain a functioning democracy against a backdrop of intense inequality, racial discrimination, and regional rivalries. From independence to the abolition of slavery, from scarring military dictatorship to the election of President Bolsonaro – the "Tropical Trump" – and his defeat by former President Lula da Silva, the author weaves a rich portrait of a country fighting against the odds to overcome the long-standing and seemingly intractable problems that have, for most of its history, hindered national unity and development.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Map
• Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Glossary
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Tropical Liberalism (1840–1930)
• 2 The Failed March to Modernity (1930–1964)
• 3 Military Dictatorship (1964–1985)
• 4 Chaotic Democracy (1985–1994)
• 5 The Triumph of Social Democracy (1994–2010)
• 6 The Great Unraveling (2010–)
• Afterword
• Further Reading
• Index
• End User License Agreement