BRAZILIANS IN PARIS: 1919

BY TEO SOARES SILLIMAN COLLEGE

ADVISOR: ADAM TOOZE APRIL 1, 2013

Copyright 2013 Teo Soares. All rights reserved.

BRAZILIANS IN PARIS: 1919

PARIS: JANUARY 18, 1919 The wind that blew from the Seine made frost cling to his bones. It swept over the rivers banks and through the gaps in the wrought-iron fencea low-grade tornado that gripped the men now exiting the Quai dOrsay. As Pandi Calgeras passed the wide wooden doors, he felt cold, and he felt frustrated.1 Not that he minded staying with family. The Brazilian delegation had been assembled in a hurry and proper lodging hadnt been arranged, so Calgeras had rented a cheap apartment next door to his brothers, but this he didnt mindit let him see his nieces, whom he adored.2 Nor did he mind that he had not been paid since crossing the Atlantic. Prices had skyrocketed after the war, and Calgeras had footed the bill for the winter clothes he bought upon arrival, but this he didnt mind. What had drawn him to Paris was not money but the mission, the high charge for which the Government has summoned me.3 Nor did he mind that Olyntho Magalhes, his co-delegate, had proved to be abysmally incompetent. Olynthos many fumbles included reservations at the clearly third-rate Plaza-Hotel, but he was still a lovable man of good, if deplorable from the diplomatic point of view.4 Rather, what weighed on Calgeras mind were the discriminatory conference
1

Like the remainder of the essay, this paragraph is based on documentary evidence: the Brazilians in Paris repeatedly complained about the weather in their diaries and telegrams. In this particular instance, the dramatic detailsthe lowgrade tornado, the particular path of the windare based on my personal experience at the Seine in December of 2011. While they are imaginative leaps, I felt they were reasonable and honest. Such leaps are made throughout the essay, but elsewhere they are indicated by modifiers such as probably, surely, and no doubt. Where such hedging language is absent, the dramatized account adheres strictly to the footnoted documentary evidence. 2 Joo Pandi Calgeras, January 4, 1919, and January 5, 1919, Dirio, in Pandi Calgeras na opinio de seus contemporaneos (So Paulo: Salles Oliveira & Cia., 1934), 64. 3 Calgeras, December 17, 1918, Dirio, PCOC, 61. Calgeras to Gama, January 27, 1919, Arquivos Histricos do Itamaraty (AHI), 273/2/9. 4 Calgeras, January 7, 1919, and January 8/9, 1919, Dirio, PCOC, 64-5.

 3 regulations that Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister, had just rammed through the first preliminary meeting of the powers assembled in Paris. The regulations addressed the procedures for the upcoming peace conference, divvying up the work among the Allies. Therein lay the problem: unlike France, Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States, which the regulations labeled as Powers with general interests entitled to major roles at the conference, Brazil was a petty power with special interests.5 Its participation, if Clemenceaus regulations were allowed to stand, would be symbolic at best. The role of Brazil is great, and it might grow even greater, Clemenceau had told the Brazilians just that afternoon.6 How rich, thought Calgeras, coming from a man who now barred Brazil from the most important international assembly in history. Was the irony in this not obvious? In 1916, Woodrow Wilson, the American president, had declared that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty as their larger counterparts.7 To now decree the powers unequal was to betray the promises made during the war. Had thousands of men not stained Europe red to protect their sovereignty? Had the Allies not spent millions of dollars to fight for a world ruled by law and not by might? To defend the rights of nations? To safeguard their integrity? Their dignity? Had these not been the reasons Brazil had entered the war?

Calgeras, January 18, 1919, Dirio, PCOC, 68-9; Calgeras and Magalhes to Domcio, January 19, 1919, AHI 227/3/3. 6 Calgeras, January 18, 1919, Dirio, PCOC, 68-9. 7 Woodrow Wilson, American Principles (speech), May 27, 1916, online by Gerhand Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65391.

 4 THE ENGLISH CHANNEL: APRIL 3, 1917 After the blast there was silence. The roaring steam engines were gone. Jos da Silva Peixe, the captain, had been asleep for barely an hour; the explosion startled him awake.8 His account of the incident, now held at the Brazilian diplomatic archives, relates that when he retired that night, the Paran had been sailing through the English Channel at an easy pace.9 It was April 3, 1917, and the war in Europe was entering its thirty-third month; Germanys renewed blockade of Britain, its third. Brazil remained neutral, however, and the green and yellow flying on the ships mast were meant to protect it from the belligerents.10 Not so tonight.11 The engine room was flooded; the lower deck, destroyed. One lifeboat had already been launched into the water by the explosion, and the forty-men crew now crowded into the remaining three, which hung from their davits over the ships side.12 Standing inside lifeboat No. 1, Jos da Silva hesitated. Roll call had shown five crewmen missing. To leave them behind was be to betray his men, but the Paran was sinking quickly, and he had his other men to think about, those who now pleaded to abandon ship. The possibility that the missing crewmen were dead must have crossed the captains mind, for when he finally cast off the lifeboats, he was certain he had been the last man onboard.13 After picking up two stokers (they had escaped from the boiler room through air vents and jumped straight into the sea), the three lifeboats pulled away from the
8 9

Magalhes to Muller. April 10, 1917. AHI 227/3/1. Magalhes to Muller. April 10, 1917. AHI 227/3/1. 10 Domcio da Gama et al., The Neutrality Rules Adopted by Brazil, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 60 (1915): 147-154. 11 Magalhes to Muller, April 10, 1917, AHI 227/3/1. 12 For size of the crew, see Estado de So Paulo, April 6. 1917. 13 Magalhes to Muller, April 10, 1917, AHI 227/3/1.

 5 Paran. Jos da Silva then saw red and white lights in the distance. Thinking them the signal of a ship coming to their rescue, he prepared to steer the small boats in their direction. That was when he heard the shells being fired. Once, twicethree, four, five times, each shot a rolling thunder. These were proof, Jos da Silva later told Brazilian officials, of a premeditated wish to do us all possible harm. He could do nothing now but watch his ship sink.14 All through the night, the lifeboats churned in the Channel waters, rocked by heavy waves and stormy weather.15 Though they had flares available, the men didnt signal for help, as they feared that would attract more fire. It was almost noon when they were found by a pair of French torpedo boats, which rescued two thirds of the Brazilian crew. An English cargo ship later came for the rest. On port in Cherbourg, France, the men reported the incident to Brazilian consular officials. One detail stood out to the authorities: the crewmen in lifeboat No. 4 recalled seeing, as they fled the Paran, the dark silhouette of a submarine gliding underneath.16 Three crewmen died.17 The cargo, 4,270 tons of coffee destined for France, sunk with the ship.18 In Brazil crowds took to the streets. They were so enraged that police in Rio ran additional patrols to stem potential riots, devoting particular attention to the citys Austrian and German consulates.19 The Germanics have continued their savage practices, degrading civilization and flooding the seas with the detritus of their crimes, wrote one newspaper in the wake of
14 15

Magalhes to Muller, April 10, 1917, AHI 227/3/1. Magalhes to Muller, April 10, 1917, AHI 227/3/1. 16 Magalhes to Muller. April 10, 1917. AHI 227/3/1. 17 Notas e Informaes, Estado de So Paulo, April 7. 1917. 18 "Coffee," Wall Street Journal, April 9, 1917, ProQuest: Historical Newspapers Complete, http://search.proquest.com/docview/129629466?accountid=15172. 19 Estado de So Paulo, April 7, 1917. Wherever possible, articles are cited by their headlines, but where no headline is given, the name of the paper opens the citation.

 6 the attack.20 Another paper opined, We are no longer neutral. Our neutrality was shot and sank to the seafloor tethered to the Brazilian flag that flew atop the Paran.21 What troubled the press, however, was not so much the loss of life and material interests as the criminality of Germanys actions. 22 The particulars of the incidentthe submarines disregard for the sanctity of a neutral ship, and the savagery conveyed by the five shellsoffended in principle.23 The Estado de So Paulo, the largest newspaper in So Paulo and a perennial advocate of liberal causes, deemed the Germans, capriciously forgotten of all the tenets of humanity and positioned against all the rules of the rights of peoples.24 These sentiments werent new. German disregard for international law had long bothered the liberal luminaries of the Brazilian intellectual elite. Chief among these was Rui Barbosa, the bald, bespectacled sexagenarian journalist and Senator from the northeastern state of Bahia. In Buenos Aires, in 1916, months before Germany sank the Paran, Rui delivered a speech that cast him as Brazils most avid proponent of the war. By ransacking Belgium, Rui told his audience, the Germans had broken promises that dated back to 1839, when the European powers signed a treaty recognizing Belgiums right to exist. In 1914, as the Kaisers army marched east, the German chancellor described that very treaty as a scrap of paper.25 Yes, treaties are but scraps of paper, Rui said two years later in Buenos Aires, but so are contracts. And laws. And constitutions.
20 21

Jornal do Commercio, April 6, 1917, reprinted in Estado de So Paulo, April 7, 1917. O Imperial, April 6, 1917, reprinted in, Estado de So Paulo, April 7, 1917. 22 O Brasil e a Alemnha. Estado de So Paulo, April 9, 1917. Jornal do Commercio, April 6, 1917, reprinted in Estado de So Paulo, April 7, 1917. O Dia, April 5, 1917, reprinted in Estado de So Paulo, April 6, 1917. 23 On other neutral ships being torpedoed: Notas e Informaes. Estado de So Paulo, April 7, 1917. On the shelling: "Brazilian Papers Demand Action Against Germany," St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 9, 1917, ProQuest: Historical Newspapers Complete, http://search.proquest.com/docview/578090551?accountid=15172. 24 Notas e Informaes, Estado de So Paulo, April 7, 1917. 25 Larry Zuckerman, Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 43.

 7 Larger and smaller scraps of paper, but paper nonetheless. So that all human transactions, all relations of society, all the rights and responsibilitiesto family and country and civilization and the Stateall fabric of the rational world, in the final analysis, amounts to little more than heaps of paper.26 To stand idly by as Germany violated its treaties was to condone her assault against a principle fundamental to liberal society: the rule of law. But the matter at hand went far beyond the legal, Rui noted, for laws concern people. Laws, Rui said, protect homes in defenseless towns; safeguard travelers in transatlantic steamers; ward off mines from the waters reserved for commerce; shield from torpedoes the fishing boats and hospital ships; shelter from bombardment the infirmaries and libraries, the monuments and temples; halt pillaging, the execution of hostages, the killing of the injured, and the poisoning of the drinking water; and guard the women, the children, the elderly, the sick, and the unarmed.27 Germanys actions were not only illegal, they were also immoral. If the neutral nations didnt join in the struggle, Rui continued, Ill remain unsure of who will have committed the greater sin against God, the greater evil: those who subjected the world to the horrors of war, or those who let the rights of peoples fade from their conscience.28 His words soon gained immediate implications. On April 2, 1917, the day before the Paran was sunk, Woodrow Wilson stood before a joint session of the U.S. Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. The explicit casus belli were submarine attacks against American merchant ships, as well as the Zimmerman telegram, in which Germany offered support to Mexico in a potential war against the United States.
26 27

Rui Barbosa, Problemas de direito internacional (London: Jas. Truscott & Son, 1916), 86. Barbosa, Problemas, 69 28 Barbosa, Problemas, 111

 8 Wilson, however, couched his request in more sweeping language. The present German submarine warfare against commerce, he said, is a warfare against mankind.29 Stripped of its rhetorical flourishes, Wilsons message, like Ruis, was specific and fundamental. Germanys actions undermined a basic human assumption: that we will refrain from haphazardly harming one another. Unrestricted submarine warfare: the phrase has been repeated so often that its meaning has become blunted, but its implications for people at the time were real and frightening. It meant that nowhere in the North Atlantic could sailors think themselves truly safe. It meant that when a ship set out to sea, its return depended not only the skill of its crew and the good will of the weather, but also on the whims of the Germans. Encounters with submarines were, in fact, rare the sonar wouldnt be invented until the 1930s, so underwater crafts relied on periscopes to find their targetsbut the possibility of such attacks was itself an affront to the covenants made between people. When Wilson said unrestricted submarine warfare violated all restraints of law,30 his words had intensely personal implications to anyone whose father or husband or brother made a living on the sea. When Germany sank the Paran, one of the killed crewmen was survived by his mother.31 This is to say that the attack invalidated another human assumptionthat parents oughtnt bury their children. The Brazilian press reported on Wilsons speech favorably, and when news about the Paran reached the country some days later, a tide of anti-German sentiment swept over the papers. Editorialists at the Estado de So Paulo called for official actionif not war, then at least a break in diplomatic relations. It would be honorable, one of them
29

Woodrow Wilson, Address to a Joint Session of Congress Requesting a Declaration of War Against Germany, April 2, 1917, online by Gerhand Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65366. 30 Wilson, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, American Presidency Project. 31 Torpedeamento do Paran, Estado de So Paulo, April 7, 1917.

 9 wrote, for our united states in the southern half of our continent to cast their lot, in a fraternal alliance, with the United States to our north.32 A week passed before Brazil finally broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. The decision was announced in a telegram sent by the Brazilian foreign minister to the German representative in Rio, and his message parroted many of arguments raised in the editorial pages of newspapers. What brought on the break was not so much the particular incidentthe torpedoing of one steamerbut the implicit breach of the rules that govern the relations between states. Sure, a neutral ship attempting to run a blockade was liable to capture, but it was not liable to attack, and certainly not without due warning.33 Not only had the German submarine failed to contact the Paran before opening fire, it had also refused assistance to the survivorsand, worst of all, it had then shelled the sinking ship. The lost lives and cargo were regrettable, but they were made unforgivable by the fact they were sacrificed without any previous action and against the expressed orders of the Law of Nations, and with an abandonment of the principles accepted in Conventions and adopted by Germany herself.34 News of the diplomatic rupture made even tiny towns in the Brazilian countryside swell with excitement. In Taubat, 5,000 people took to the streets. In Porto Feliz, they sang the Marseillaise until 10 p.m. In Amparo, the allied flags were paraded alongside Brazils own green and yellow, and the towns 120-men reserve unit made preparations for war.35 Germany has managed to make herself so universally loathed that wherever war is declared against her, the people feel nothing but joy and enthusiasm, wrote one
32 33

Estado de So Paulo, April 6, 1917. Mller to Pauli, April 11, 1917, in The Brazilian Green Book: Consisting of diplomatic documents relating to Brazils attitude with regard to the European war, 1914-1917 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1918), 29. 34 Mller to Pauli. April 11, 1917, BGB, 30. 35 O Brasil e a Allemanha, Estado de So Paulo, April 12, 1917.

 10 newspaper. Now its our turn to break off relations with Germany, and here, too, the general response is joy.36 But elation could also turn violent. In Campinas and So Paulo, the windows of German businesses and schools were shattered with rocks.37 In Rio, celebrations took jubilant cariocas to the building of the Jornal do Commercio, where Rui Barbosa, the liberal Senator, was slated to speak. Rui, however, was nonplussed: why had Brazil not gone further? Why were Brazilians so thrilled at a mere break in relations while their brethren to the north had declared full war? Why, gentlemen? Rui asked. Is it because international law changes at the equator, granting one set of rights to the Yankees and another to us? Or is it because Brazilian lives are worth less than their American counterparts? Or because the sovereignty of a great power is different from that of a smaller one?38 To stand idly by, Rui thought, was to condone Germanys encroachment on Brazilian sovereignty, and this had sweeping consequences. If Brazil failed to take action, then how could it expect other nations to respect the integrity of its territory, the security of its people? War was necessary, said Rui, to justify our claim over our portion of Earth. He went on: Only then will I see fulfilled, in my old age, the patriotic dream of my youth, a Brazil that will resemble, as John Milton once wrote, a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.39 It would be another five months before Brazil finally shed the shackles of passivity. The day was October 25, 1917, and the immediate casus belli was the sinking

36 37

Cartas do Rio, Estado de So Paulo, April 12, 1917. Estado de So Paulo, April 13, 1917. 38 Rui Barbosa, O Dever do Brasil (speech), April 14, 1917, in vol. 44 of Obras Completas de Rui Barbosa (OCRB), 52-53. 39 Rui Barbosa, O Dever do Brasil, vol. 44, OCRB, 57.

 11 of the Macau, the fourth Brazilian steamer torpedoed by the Germans.40 The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Brazilian Congress, voted for war to the tune of 149 against one. In the Senate, the vote was unanimous.41 Were witnessing a rare occurrence, wrote the Estado de So Paulo, the liberal newspaper: The people and their government finally in absolute agreement over a question that affects profoundly our greatest moral and material interests.42 And the people were indeed invested. At a gathering of workers in Rio, one labor organizer cried, We must help ease the suffering of our nation, lending our might to our country, shedding even our bloodif blood be necessary to wash the crimes of the Germans against our national sovereignty.43

PARIS: JANUARY 18, 1919 The Quai dOrsay was not literally the French Foreign Ministry. Quai was French for dock, as Pandi Calgeras probably knew; his mother, a daughter of the French upper class, must have taught him so.44 Quai dOrsay was in fact the name of the wharf that housed the ministry, on the left bank of the Seine. So beautiful did the river appear from that location that artists sometimes assembled their easels by its shores to capture the scenery.45 Probably no painters sat on the embankment that afternoon. It was January and
40

Wenceslau Braz, Message from the president of the republic to the national congress, October 25, 1917, in BGB, 88. 41 O Brasil na Guerra, Estado de So Paulo, October 27, 1917. 42 Notas e Informaes, Estado de So Paulo, October 27, 1917. 43 Attitude dos Operarios Cariocas em Face da Situao, Estado de So Paulo, October 27, 1917. 44 Antonio Gontijo de Carvalho, Biographia, in PCOC, 9. 45 Thomas Girtin, for example, produced a couple of drawings of the Parisian scenery as seen from the Quai dOrsay. View of the Tuilleries and Bridge (drawing), 1802, accession number B1981.25.2613, Yale Center for British Art. Also: Girtin, View of the Palais des Tuileries and the Louvred from the Quai dOrsay (drawing), 1801-2, ID number 11784, British Museum. For a literary description of the Quai dOrsay, see Stphane Lauzanne, The Mirror of the Quai dOrsay, in The North American Review 216:802 (1922): 323-331.

 12 cold, and the trees that lined the river had been stripped of their foliage. What color there was came only from the small boats that might have cruised the waters. This was fitting: when Pandi Calgeras left the ministry on January 18, 1919, not even the Seine could have bettered his mood. Beady-eyed and moon-faced, Calgeras wore his hair swept back and his moustache rigid.46 He was also short: a family photograph, taken on the stairs that led to the Calgeras home in Rio, showed him struggling to tower over his wife and daughters despite standing a full two steps above them.47 A carioca by birth and an engineer by training, he dedicated his life to public service. Though younghe was six months short of fifty when he arrived in FranceCalgeras was a long-time member of the Chamber of Deputies. There, he had earned a reputation as a hard worker and meticulous orator: his long speeches, delivered in his deep metallic voice, were often read full-length from notes.48 Calgeras was an early addition to the Brazilian delegation. Domcio da Gama, the newly minted Brazilian foreign minister, offered him the position in mid-December of 1918, over a lunch meeting at the Foreign Ministry (known as Itamaraty after the palace that housed it in Rio). The armistice had been signed a month prior, and the war machinery assembled in Europe was finally winding down; the peace conference, just gearing up. Even though Brazils contributions to the war effort were negligible, the country had formally declared war on Germany, so it followed, logically and legally, that the country would have a hand at making the peace. The countrys invitation to Paris, however, still hadnt come.
46 47

Calogeras em Versalhes (photograph), 1919, PCOC, 62. Calogeras e sua Familia (photograph), undated, PCOC, 21. 48 Sertrio de Castro, Calgeras, PCOC, 27.

 13 The great powers had already begun their own preparations. The British, for example, reserved rooms for some 400 people at the Hotel Majestic.49 Domcio learned this from his ministers in London and Paris, who also told him that the preliminary meetings, held before the conference, would be limited to Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. Not even Japan would join them.50 The smaller nations would attend only the peace conference proper and only to deal with matters of their immediate concern.51 To Domcio, this was unacceptable. The Brazilian public had been expecting their country to play some role in Paris.52 After all, hadnt Brazilians entered the war precisely to assert their sovereignty? How could they do so if Brazil were snubbed at the conference? Domcio set to work. He instructed his ministers in Washington and London to press his American and British counterparts for an invitation.53 At virtually the same time, he telegraphed a roster of the delegation to Olyntho Magalhes, his minister in Paris, and instructed him to inform the French government that Olyntho himself would serve as a delegate to the preliminary meetings, pending only an invitation.54 His strategy, it seems, was to present Brazilian participation as fait accompli. Domcio had yet to secure a seat in either the preliminary meetings or the conference proper when he asked Calgeras to represent the country in both. Calgeras knew this invitation stood on shaky grounds, but he was nonetheless elated.55 To a man whose greatest ambition was to give everything (and theres so little to give!) to our
49 50

Magalhes to Gama, November 27, 1918, AHI 273/2/11. Fontoura to Gama, December 5, 1918, AHI 273/2/11. 51 Magalhes to Gama, December 4, 1918, AHI 273/2/11. 52 Gama to Ipanema, December 5, 1919, AHI 273/2/11. 53 Gama to Fontoura, December 5, 1918, AHI 273/2/11. Gama to Ipanema, December 2, 1918, AHI 273/2/11. 54 Gama to Magalhes, November 25, 1918, AHI 273/2/11. Gama to Magalhes, December 5, 1918, AHI 273/2/11. 55 Calgeras, December 16, 1918, Dirio, PCOC, 68.

 14 beloved Brazil, the peace proceedings were an unique occasion, he wrote in his diary.56 There would be such lofty questions discussed in Paris! The world awaited reconstruction, Domcio had told him as they ate. There were new borders to draw. There were domestic economies to rebuild. There were war debts to pay and indemnities to claim. There were Germanys colonies to redistribute and the Ottoman Empire to dismember. There were treaties signed in Vienna, 1815; London, 1839; and Frankfurt, 1871to rewrite. And there was the League of Nationsthat ill-defined but weighty issue, that golden apple of discord, that eventual battlefield where divergent visions of Man and World Order will meetto create.57 No self-respecting statesman could pass up such an opportunity. Yet a month later, as Calgeras exited the Quai dOrsay into cold Paris and glanced at the Seineits shores colorless, its waters running no more or less fluidly than the waters of any other river in the worldhe may well have wondered if he shouldnt have stayed home. Domcios maneuvering had been successful, and the Brazilians had been awarded a seat at the conference, but the whole enterprise now seemed like an empty promise. The question troubling Calgeras that afternoon was in essence bureaucratic. At its heart was a single paragraph of a single article of the regulations voted by (or as Calgeras might put it, imposed upon) the first preliminary meeting of the nations assembled in Paris. It read: The belligerent Powers with special interests (Belgium, Brazil, the British Dominions and India, China, Cuba, Greece, Guatemala, Hayti, the Hedjaz, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Roumania, Serbia, Siam, the Czecho-Slovak Republic) shall attend the sessions at which questions
56 57

Calgeras, December 16, 1918, Dirio, PCOC, 68. Calgeras, December 13, 1918, Dirio, PCOC, 66.

 15 concerning them are discussed.58 By itself, this clause was sufficiently problematicwho was to decide which questions concerned which countries? Did freedom of navigation concern land-locked Czechoslovakia?but it was made worse by the paragraph that preceded it: The belligerent Powers with general interests (the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy, Japan) shall attend all sessions and commissions.59 Not only had the Great Powers arbitrarily excluded the smaller powers from debating certain questions, they also excluded them from all commissions that were to address the most important issues before the conference. While countries with general interests would attend all sessions and commissions, no mention of commissions was made in the paragraph about countries with special interests.60 Calgeras found this outrageous. Special interests? Nonsense! Brazilians had the same general interests as the French and the British and the Americans: to safeguard their citizens and their rights as a nation. Brazil had entered the war to defend its sovereignty, to stake its claim on the world stage. The regulations of the conference squashed those ambitions. The Brazilians in Paris, it seemed, would be little more than spectators, made to watch as the Great Powers reinvented the world. The preposterousness of these regulations leaps to the eyes, Calgeras wrote to Domcio that evening. The great powers have cast themselves as judge and jury over the interests of the smaller ones.61 This complaint was by no means exclusive to Brazil. Each small power had a
58

Preliminary Peace Conference, Protocol No. 1, Session of January 18, 1919 (minutes), in vol. 3 of Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (FRUS), 172. 59 Preliminary Peace ConferenceSession of January 18, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 172. 60 Preliminary Peace ConferenceSession of January 18, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 172. 61 Calgeras and Magalhes to Domcio, January 19, 1919, AHI 227/3/3.

 16 particular casus belli to join the fight against Germany, but they all shared a very general interest in their own sovereignty. When Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister, told the conference that the war had been a crusade of humanity for Right,62 when Woodrow Wilson said that the fortunes of all peoples are involved,63 their words had immediate and tangible meaning for nations like Belgium. It is because Germany had not respected the rights of nations that some 60,000 Belgian men had died. It was clear that the Great Powers had mouthed the words but hadnt taken them to heart or given them real thought, Calgeras wrote in his diary. This situation is intolerable, and all other delegates share in my sentiments.64 Domcio, however, didnt agree. A challenge to the regulations would be both impolitic and vain, he wrote in a telegram.65 That Brazil had even secured a seat at the conference was an accomplishment; why jeopardize that position by launching a moral crusade against the Great Powers? The regulations may even prove providential, averting gridlock. And most importantly, Domcio wrote, bickering over these ideological matters might compromise Brazils concrete claims, which are of more immediate interest to us.66 So interested was Domcio in these claims that they would come to dictate Brazilian diplomacy in Paris for the next five months.

SANTOS: OCTOBER 26, 1917 A little pinkish mullatto, was what a close friend called Domcio da Gama.
62 63

Preliminary Peace Conference, Protocol No. 1, Session of January 18, 1919 (minutes), in FRUS, vol. 3, 162. Preliminary Peace Conference January 18, 1919, in FRUS, vol. 3, 165. 64 Calgeras, Dirio, January 20, 1919, PCOC, 69-70. 65 Gama to Calgeras, January 25, 1919, AHI 227/3/18. 66 Gama to Calgeras, January 25, 1919, AHI 227/3/18.

 17 Brle du soleil, another friend suggested.67 What caught the eye, beyond his skin, a shade darker than that of most politicians at the time, was his hair: combed back and very shiny, the black strands very black and the white ones cast of pure silver.68 Tall and slender, the foreign minister had a sober elegance about himself.69 He had been the second Brazilian ambassador to the United States, which is to say that he had been the second Brazilian ambassador ever; in 1910, when he assumed the position, all other Brazilian representatives abroad were mere ministers. The ambassadorship to Washington had been created in 1905 as a sign of Brazilian-American friendship, and both Domcio and his predecessor had been handpicked for the position by the foreign minister at the time.70 Domcios stint in the United States scored him prestige among Brazilian diplomats, and also an exotic and quite complicated American wife, as a colleague later wrote.71 Domcio had been abroad when Brazil entered the war. He returned to Rio in 1918 at the request of Rodrigues Alves, the newly elected president, who asked him to lead the Foreign Ministry. Domcio, however, soon saw his position compromised: after being elected, Rodrigues Alves fell victim to the Spanish Flu. The president died in January 1919, only two months after his term was set to begin (he had been too ill to take office), and a new election was called for April. When the Brazilian delegation left for Paris, Domcio was in limbo, the cabinet member of a deceased president. Retaining his
67 68

Heitor Lyra, Minha vida diplomtica (Lisboa: Centro do Livro Brasileiro, 1972), 142. Domcio da Gama (photograph), undated, Academia Brasileira de Letras, http://www.academia.org.br/abl/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?sid=307. 69 Lyra, Minha vida diplomtica, 142. 70 E. Bradford Burns, The Unwritten Alliance: Rio-Branco and Brazilian-American Relations (New York, Columbia University Press, 1966), 98-9, 141. 71 Lyra, Minha vida diplomtica, 141, 143.

 18 job demanded that he play politics. In the Brazilian Old Republic of the early twentieth century, this meant one thing: appeasing the political elite of So Paulo and Minas Gerais. This was the era of caf com leite politics, dominated by powerful coffee planters in the state of So Paulo and, to a lesser extent, by agrarian interests in the large (and milk-producing) state of Minas Gerais. Brazils was an export-based economy whose products included sugar, tobacco, cocoa, cotton, and rubber, but these were pittances compared to coffee, harvested from the fertile terra roxa soils of So Paulo.72 On good years, the state produced 65 to seventy percent of the countrys coffee, and duties leveraged on So Paulos exports accounted for thirty to forty percent of the federal governments revenue.73 This translated into political leverage: out of the eleven presidential contests held between 1894 and 1930, six were taken by men from So Paulo. (Rodrigues Alves himself had been a paulista governor). Another three went to mineiros.74 The oligarchs institutionalized their political machinery as regional parties, namely the Partido Republicano Paulista (PRP) and the Partido Republicano Mineiro (PRM).75 National parties waxed and waned onto the political scene, but they amounted to little more than coalitions of their regional counterparts.76 In each national contest, the PRP and PRM colluded to nominate an official candidate, and together they provided the votes to see their man into office. Suffrage was not tied to property, being extended to
72

William Glade, Latin America and the international economy, 1870-1914, in The Cambridge History of Latin America Vol. IV, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986). 73 E. Bradford Burns, A History of Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 263. 74 Boris Fausto, Society and Politics, in Brazil: Empire and Republic, 1822-1930, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 272. 75 Fausto, Society and Politics, 270-1. 76 Fausto, Society and Politics, 266.

 19 all literate males over 21, but given that literacy rates hovered between 15 and 25 percent, turnout was perennially low. In 1922, for example, the tallied votes corresponded to 1.9 percent of the population.77 This is to say that national politics reflected not popular sentiment but the whims of the oligarchs. Domcio da Gama took the Foreign Ministry hoping to remain aloof from domestic politics, but surely he understood the mechanics of power in Rio.78 Brazil, he knew, had entered the Great War with the blessing of the paulista coffee growers; when Congress voted for war on October 26, 1917, the states coffee exchange in Santos passed a resolution supporting the governments decision.79 Now that the war was over, the interests of the So Paulo planters probably occupied Domcios mind. First there was the money owed for Brazilian coffee sold to Germany. At the time the war began, 64,000 tons of coffee belonging to So Paulo had been stored in Hamburg and Bremen. Another 48,000 tons were stored in Antwerp, which was itself soon occupied by Germany. Fearing the German government might confiscate the coffeeit had entered the country under the auspices of a British firm, technically making it enemy contrabandthe Brazilian government intervened on So Paulos behalf and brokered a deal: instead of seizing the coffee, the German government would buy it, and the total sum of the sale, roughly 90 million Marks, would be deposited in the Bank of Bleichrder, in Berlin.80 What appeared to be a straightforward transaction was made more interesting by the fact that Germany subsequently embargoed the money. This was problematic for
77 78

Fausto, Society and Politics, 279. Lyra, Minha vida diplomtica,145. 79 A bolsa official de caf approva um voto de apoio ao governo, Estado de So Paulo, October 27, 1917. 80 Dossier, AHI 273/2/11.

 20 obvious reasonsaccess to ones own deposits is a basic tenet of bankingbut also because the coffee had been originally shipped to Europe as collateral for loans issued by British and French lenders. Making matters worse was the fact that the interest rate on the 90 million Marks sitting in the Bleichrder accounts was lower than the interest rate on the original loans.81 Had So Paulo been able to withdraw the money, it might have been able to pay its creditors in London and Paris, but since Berlin had proved uncooperative, the interest on the British and French loans had mounted. By 1918, it had been mounting for nearly four years. The first Brazilian objective in Paris, then, was to guarantee So Paulos money. This must have seemed simple compared to the countrys second concrete claim: securing ownership of the German merchant ships seized by Brazil two years prior. There were 46 of them, formerly bearing names like Prussia, Steiermark, and Frida Wrmann, but now sailing as Cabedello, Camam, and Macap.82 They had been stationed in Brazil on June 2, 1917, when the Brazilian president signed a decree requisitioning all German merchant ships anchored in the Republics ports.83 Though urgently necessary, the president told Congress, his measure was without any notion of confiscation, which is repugnant to the spirit of our legislation.84 Be that as it may: by the evening of June 3, 1917, all German ships anchored in Rio had been boarded by Brazilian crews. As the green and yellow climbed their masts, cheers erupted from crowds on land and sailors in nearby boats.85 In one fell swoop, Brazil increased the size

81 82

Dossier, AHI 273/2/11. Relao especificada dos vapores que eram allemes em junho de 1917 e requisitados pelo Brasil, AHI 273/2/11. 83 Wenceslau Braz, June 2, 1917, AHI 321/1/13 84 Wenceslau Braz, address to congress, May 26, 1917, in BGB, 41-2. 85 Dossier, AHI 273/2/11. Brasil e Allemanha, Estado de So Paulo, June 3, 1917.

 21 of its merchant navy by roughly seventy percent.86 The confiscationor requisitionof the ships was timely. With German submarines circling the North Atlantic, the European powers were hesitant to risk their ships in trips for non-essential imports, like coffee. Brazil, with its small merchant navy, had always relied on European vessels to move its product, but by 1917, the number of foreign ships docking at Brazilian ports had fallen by sixty percent.87 France, in particular, had entertained an embargo on import of Brazilian coffee as early as December of 1916. The country already had two years worth of the stuff in storage, said a member of the French parliament at the time. Why not follow Britains example and embargo the product altogether? Not only would this free up shipping, it would also prevent gold from leaving French vaults, shoring up the Franc vis--vis other currencies.88 The French legislature took up the question, and by March 1917, it had banned all foreign trade, save merchandise purchased by the state or exempted by special arrangement.89 Brazilian coffee fell under the latter category, to be freely imported until June of 1917. The French government pledged to renew the exemption thereafterbut only on the condition that the coffee be transported aboard Brazilian ships.90 Should they fall prey to German submarines, all the French would lose was the coffee. So it wasnt long after the Brazilian flags were hoisted up the masts of the German ships that the Foreign Ministry leased thirty of them to France. In exchange, the French government agreed to buy 2 million bags of coffee (some 130,000 tons), as well
86

Based on tonnage. In July 1916, Brazil owned 169 merchant vessels for a total of 297,800. The 46 captured ships weighed in at 216,000 tons. Figures from Eugenio Vargas Garcia, O Brasil e a Liga das Naes (1919-1926): vencer ou no perder (Porto Alegre: Editora da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2000), 40-1. 87 Bill Albert, South America and the First World War: The Impact of the War on Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 40-5, 79. 88 Magalhes to Mller, December 2, 1916, AHI 227/3/1. 89 Magalhes to Mller, March 26, 1917, AHI 227/3/1. 90 Magalhes to Mller, April 4, 1917, AHI 227/3/1.

 22 as 100 million Francs worth of other Brazilian goods, all of which would be transported aboard the thirty leased vessels.91 It was an ideal arrangement: it ensured the French would continue to import Brazilian coffee (no doubt appeasing the caf com leite oligarchs), and it augmented the transport capabilities of the Allies, who needed to ferry food and soldiers from America to Europe. The American ambassador in Rio was himself jockeying for use of the requisitioned ships, but given the urgent need for these vessels in the North Atlantic, he happily deferred to the French.92 As the war wound to a close, however, questions arose as to the legality of Brazils actions. No one seemed to know what to label the German ships. They were not spoils of war, for Brazil was not a belligerent when their seizure occurred. (True, Rio had revoked neutrality in the conflict, but it had neither taken part in hostilities nor aided one side or the other, so according to international law, it remained neutral by default.93) Making matters worse was the language chosen by the president when he addressed Congress on the matter. The ships, he had insisted, werent confiscated; they were requisitioned, a measure based upon the principles of the Convention signed at The Hague on October 18, 1907.94 This meant nothing: on October 18, 1907, no fewer than thirteen conventions were signed at The Hague, and five of them dealt with ships and naval warfare.95 It seemed, however, that he was invoking Convention V, which held that a neutral state might use a belligerents property to the extent that it is absolutely necessary.96 Accordingly, the president had told Congress that requisitioning the
91 92

Contrat daffretement au gouvernement franais de navires du Lloyd Brsilien, December 3, 1917, AHI 273/2/11. Morgan to Peanha, November 2, 1917, AHI 273/2/11. 93 Dossier, AHI 273/2/11. 94 Wenceslau Braz, address to congress, May 26, 1917, in BGB, 42. 95 Dossier, AHI 273/2/11. 96 This, in fact, was the assumption made by the official compiling the dossier. Dossier, AHI 273/2/11. Convention V: Respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land, The Hague, 18 October

 23 German ships was an urgent necessity, and his decree had been meant to fulfill the necessities of shipping and commerce.97 But if the president justified the measure on the grounds of its absolute necessity, then why did the Foreign Ministry later refer to the requisitioned ships as reparations for the torpedoed Brazilian vessels? Only three days after the decree was signed, the Itamaraty issued a telegram that described the ships as collateral, to be held until the German government reimbursed Brazil for the sunken steamers. Such a sequestration is a simple measure of precaution, it read. But if satisfaction demanded continues to be refused, the ships can incontestably be used for the reparation of the injured interests.98 Legally, this was an entirely different argument. By the end of the war, the Brazilians themselves recognized the precariousness of their claim. It is unbecoming for a country to show itself so uncertain and dubious in defending its deeds, read a 1919 Itamaraty dossier issued to its delegation in Paris. The same document, nonetheless, offered yet a third explanation for the measure, this one amounting to a constitutional punt: Brazil had seized the ships neither as reparations nor on the grounds of urgent necessity, but in the exercise of eminent domain, which the local sovereign holds over all property under its jurisdiction.99 This was a preposterous argument, but no doubt Domcio da Gama expected Pandi Calgeras and the remainder of the Brazilian delegation in Paris to do whatever was necessary to secure the 46 ships. Along with the money on deposit in Berlin, the ships were the claims of immediate interest to the caf com leite oligarchs. These were, as
1907, online at International and Humanitarian Law: Treaties and Documents, International Committee of the Red Cross, http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/200?opendocument. Accessed March 29, 2013. 97 Wenceslau Braz, address to congress, May 26, 1917, in BGB, 41-42. Emphasis added. Wenceslau Braz, June 2, 1917, AHI 321/1/13. Emphasis added. 98 Peanha to Obermller, June 5, 1917, in BGB, 46-47. 99 Dossier, AHI 273/2/11.

 24 well, the questions on the mind of Epitcio Pessoa as he crossed the Atlantic on his way to Paris.

RIO DE JANEIRO: DECEMBER 22, 1918 Epitcio had been no ones first choice to head the Brazilian delegation at the conference. Public consensus held that the post would go to Rui Barbosa, the liberal senator from Bahia.100 He was an obvious candidate, having been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the war. Further, he had a proven diplomatic record: in 1907, Rui had served as the Brazilian delegate to the Second Hague Conference, where he had argued so zealously for liberal principles that Brazilian newspapers later dubbed him Eagle of the Hague.101 Particularly noteworthy had been his stance on a project for an International Court of Justice. The 17-nation court would permanently sit nine major powers, while the rest of the world was to take turns on the remaining eight seats, each countrys tenure determined according to a three-tiered classification system that relegated Brazil to the bottom-most tier.102 Sovereignty is absolute and knows no classification, an outraged Rui had told the general assembly at The Hague.103 His vocal opposition to the project had galvanized other second- and third-tiered nations, whose delegates staunchly backed his challenge to the major powers. The debate in 1907 had ended in a stalemate, itself a victory for Brazil.104 Over a decade later, on December 3, 1918, Rodrigues Alves, the ailing Brazilian
100 101

Vargas Garcia, O Brasil e a Liga das Naes, 29. Notcias Diversas, Estado de So Paulo, December 12, 1909. 102 Burns, Unwritten Alliance, 121-122. 103 Rui Barbosa quoted in Burns, Unwritten Alliance, 124. 104 Burns, Unwritten Alliance, 126.

 25 president, formally invited Rui Barbosa to head the Brazilian delegation to Paris.105 Rui, however, declined. The invitation, he wrote in a letter to the president, came too late, arriving at Ruis doorstep on December 5.106 In order to get to Paris in time for the conference, Rui would need to depart immediately, and this left no time to prepare. But the invitation was also late in another sense: it arrived after the Jornal do Commercio, an occasional mouthpiece for the federal government, implied that Domcio da Gama would head the Brazilian delegation in his capacity as foreign minister.107 This slighted Rui. For four years now this war has demanded, almost exclusively, my every effort, imposing itself before me as the largest human movement in all of history, he wrote. I must confess I had entertained, briefly, the hope that it would fall on my shoulders to speak for Brazil.108 That Domcio had been named before him, even if unofficially, must have so spited Rui that he refused to accept the position.109 Domcio later said he had nothing to do with the story in the Jornal do Commercio, but he did, in fact, have his own designs for the Brazilian delegation.110 A colleague at the Foreign Ministry wrote that Domcio had entertained the idea of heading the delegation ever since accepting the invitation to take over the Itamaraty.111 Domcio had also been laboring under the assumption that the British and the Americans were sending their foreign ministers to the conference, and he felt the Brazilians should follow suit. And as the former ambassador to the United States, Domcio was well acquainted
105 106

Vargas Garcia, O Brasil e a Liga das Naes, 29, note 13. Barbosa to Alves, December 8, 1818, reproduced in Estado de So Paulo, December 13, 1918. 107 Varias, November 24, 1918, Jornal do Commercio, quoted in Barbosa to Alves, December 8, 1818, itself reproduced in Estado de So Paulo, December 13, 1918. See also Rui Barbosa, O Caso Internacional (speech), April 4, 1919, in OCRB, vol. 46, book 1, 220-2. 108 Barbosa to Alves, December 8, 1818, reproduced in Estado de So Paulo, December 13, 1918. 109 Barbosa, O Caso Internacional, OCRB, vol. 46, 220. 110 Barbosa to Alves. December 8, 1818, reproduced in Estado de So Paulo, December 13, 1918. 111 Lyra, Minha vida diplomtica,157.

 26 with several of the American players in Paris.112 Surely his contacts would serve him well in the politicking of the conference.113 But Domcio, too, would be barred from Paris. As the conference neared, the press grew impatient at the uncertain composition of the Brazilian delegation, blaming Domcio for the whole affair. Like never before, wrote the Estado de So Paulo, Brazil seems inert, or else floundering, disoriented, as though in shadows. It went on: Sources close to the Itamaraty tell us that the foreign minister himself has resolved to go to Europe, heading the Brazilian delegation. And those news, which at first were only rumors, now gain greater currency, gain weight, all to the palpablewhy not say it?to the palpable disgust of the general opinion. We welcomed our old ambassador in Washington when he was appointed to the foreign ministry; and, for that very reason, we refuse to admit that his first act in office is a disservice to Brazil, for such is Ruy Barbosas exclusion from a post that, unquestionably, is his by a consensus of the people.114 Rui had not even been invited when this story ran, but it didnt matter: public opinion was already decidedly against Domcio.115 That same day, the foreign minister telegraphed Washington to say he wouldnt attend the conference for reasons of internal politics.116 The delegation, therefore, remained without a head. Then, three days before Christmas, Domcio da Gama paid a house visit to Epitcio Pessoa, a Senator from the northeastern state of Paraba.117 If only Epitcio spoke better English (an observer in Paris remarked he understood it imperfectly, if at all), he would have been the perfect man for the post.118 Fifty-four at the time, Epitcio wore his hair swept sideways and his
112 113

Epitcio to Gama, February 7, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. Lyra, Minha vida diplomtica, 157. 114 O Brasil e a Paz, Estado de So Paulo, December 3, 1918. 115 Another scathing editorial: As interinidades, o Sr. Domicio, e a Conferencia da Paz, Estado de So Paulo, December 12, 1918. 116 Magalhes to Gama, December 3, 1918, AHI 235/4/4. 117 Conferencia do Sr. Epitacio Pessoa com o Ministro do Exterior, Estado de So Paulo, December 23, 1918. 118 David Hunter Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1928), vol. 1, 125.

 27 moustache thick, so it bristled against his lower lip; in photographs, the upturned tips of his handlebar give the impression of a perpetual smile. Though no Rui Barbosa, Epitcio had the makings of a liberal. On the night the Brazilian monarchy fell, a 24-year-old Epitcio was sitting at the house of the coups instigator and first president of the Old Republic.119 Later, Epitcio co-authored the Brazilian civil code and served as both minister of justice and attorney general. By 1918, he was a well-respected jurist and public man. A few days after Domcios visit, Epitcio boarded a transatlantic steamer destined to a conference that promised to remake the modern world. Stashed in the hull of the Curvelo were supplies for the Brazilian delegation in Paris: 1,984 lbs of rice; 1,322 lbs of beans; 3,968 lbs of sugar; 992 lbs of flour; 551 lbs of coffee; 529 lbs of lard; 294 jars of fruit preserves; fifty jars of marmalade; 56 jars of jam; fifty chickens; one dozen erasers; one box of Hotchkiss-brand staples; one Hotchkiss-brand stapler; 3 Corona typewriters with ribbons; and one Remington typewriter, model 11-B.120 Onboard, Epitcio passed his time hunched over one of these typewriters, preparing memoranda about So Paulos money in the Bank of Bleichrder and the 46 requisitioned German ships. He wrote these memos in Portuguese and translated them into French, but the Curvelo reached Havre before he could have them put into English.121

PARIS: JANUARY 27, 1919 The European weather didnt agree with Pandi Calgeras, and neither did the flu
119 120

Michael Streeter, Epitcio Pessoa (London: Haus Publishing, 2010), 16-7. The list of items comes from three receipts, dated December 26, 1918, December 30, 1918, and February 14, 1919, filed at AHI 227/2/7. 121 Pessoa to Gama, January 14, 1919, in vol. 14 of Obras Completas de Epitcio Pessoa (OCEP), 7. Pessoa to Gama, February 1, 1919, OCEP, vol. 14, 8.

 28 pandemic that now swept the continent. By the time Epitcio arrived in Paris on January 27 to take the helm of the Brazilian delegation, Calgeras was already nursing the first signs of an illness that would leave him bedridden for a whole month.122 It had been a trying couple of weeks for Calgeras. The regulations presented at the first preliminary meeting had left him fuming. In this he was not alone. By January of 1919, twenty-nine nations were represented in Paris. They had been brought from places like Liberia and Siam on the promise that they would have a hand in reshaping the world.123 Now they were discovering that their participation would be minimal at best, and they were growing restless.124 Particularly outraged were countries that had bled in the war, like Portugal, which sent 60,000 soldiers to the Western front, and Belgium, which, in the wording of wartime propaganda, had been raped by the Germans.125 Calgeras himself met with several representatives from small powers. The Conference, he told the Serbian delegate, has become a dictatorship of the five Great Powers; the League of Nations implies the equality of nations, but in the Conference that aspires to create it, the organizing principle is sheer strength.126 The rumblings of these small-power talks reached the Quai dOrsay, making themselves heard inside the office of the French foreign minister. It was a wood-paneled room decorated with faded tapestries, and in it, behind closed doors (and closed windows; the room was often hot, but the French balked at any suggestions of letting in fresh air), met the five Great Powers.127 This Supreme Council was the effective
122

He first mentions his illness in his diary on January 23, 1919, and after a month-long hiatus, he resumes the diary on March 6, 1919, noting he hadnt written during February because he had been ill. Dirio, PCOC, 72, 76. 123 Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: six months that changed the world (New York: Random House, 2002), 56. 124 Olyntho and Magalhes to Gama, January 23, 1919, AHI 227/3/3. 125 MacMillan, Paris 1919, 57. Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium. 126 Calgeras, January 22, 1919, Dirio, PCOC, 70. 127 MacMillan, Paris 1919, 54.

 29 governing body of the conference, made up of representatives from the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. Though Calgeras labeled them dictators, the men in the Supreme Council thought themselves more analogous to a cabinet within a representative system of government.128 The British Foreign Ministrys records coyly referred to these meetings as conversations.129 On the Wednesday following the first plenary session, the topic of conversation at the Supreme Council was the participation of small powers in the commission that would design the League of Nations. Woodrow Wilson, the Leagues chief exponent, had assumed that only the Great Powers would take part in the commission. They would consult representatives from other nations, and they would submit the final project to a vote at the general assembly of the conference, but the League itself would be designed by the Great Powers alone.130 Lloyd George, the British prime minister, saw matters differently. The League of Nations, however important it might be to the Great Powers, must be even more important to the small Powers, since, if efficacious, it would constitute their shield and protection, he said. This made sense: while the Great Powers could count on their large armies and powerful guns, the small powers had no recourse but international law. Lloyd George felt the Supreme Council should choose some smaller nations to join the commission.131 Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister, took this a step further. Indeed,
128 129

MacMillan, Paris 1919, 58. The English-language minutes of the meetings, prepared by the British delegation, bear headings that read either, Secretarys notes of a conversation held in M. Pichons Room at the Quai dOrsay, or Notes on Conversations Held in the Office of M. Pichon at the Quai dOrsay. FRUS, vol. 3. 130 Secretarys Notes of a Conversation Held in M. Pichons Room at the Quai dOrsay, Paris, January 22, 1919, at 15 Hours 15, in FRUS, vol. 3, 679. 131 Secretarys Notes January 22, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 679.

 30 the small nations should be included in the commission, but they ought to be allowed to nominate their own delegates, he said. It was a matter of public opinion. Though he was convinced that on these Committees the small powers would merely follow the lead of the Great Powers, Clemenceau still thought it necessary to give them the idea that they were being consulted.132 Lloyd George agreed: Clemenceaus scheme would give some satisfaction to the small powers, who were beginning to complain bitterly at their exclusion, the British prime minister said. They felt they were locked out, and they ought to be brought into the making of the peace.133 Clemenceaus vision, with Lloyd Georges backing, won out. The regulations were amended to read that, in addition to ten representatives from the Great Powers, the commission on the League of Nations would include five representatives to be selected by the small powers.134 A similar design was applied to the commissions on navigation, labor, and war crimes. To the fifth commission, on reparations, the Great Powers appointed delegates from the countries that had lost most in the war: Belgium, Greece, Poland, Roumenia, and Serbia.135 Such were the regulations on January 25, 1919, at the opening of the second general meeting. Surely the representatives of the Great Powers felt satisfied as they took their seats that afternoon at the Quai dOrsay. They had concocted a scheme in which they retained control over the conference while still offering a show of inclusion to the rest of the world. That this scheme was in fact nave doesnt seem to have occurred to them. The 19
132 133

Secretarys Notes January 22, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 680. Secretarys Notes January 22, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 681. 134 Secretarys Notes January 22, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 682. 135 Secretarys Notes January 22, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 682-3.

 31 nations being asked to elect five representatives had come to Paris to assert their sovereignty; the very act of electing representatives was antithetical to their cause. At the second preliminary meeting, Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau watched delegate after delegate, from Belgium, Serbia, Greece, and Portugal, deliver speeches demanding that they be represented in this or that commission. Even Calgeras, going against Domcios orders, spoke: It is with some surprise that I constantly hear it said: This has been decided, that has been decided. Who has taken a decision? he asked. We are a sovereign assembly, a sovereign court. It seems to me that the proper body to take a decision is the Conference itself.136 Clemenceau was irate. Speaking on behalf of the Great Powers, he began, With your permission, I will remind you that it was we who decided that there should be a Conference at Paris, and that the representatives of the countries interested should be summoned to attend it. I make no mystery of itthere is a Conference of the Great Powers going on in the next room.137 He went on: We have had dead, we have wounded in millions, and if we had not kept before us the great question of the League of Nations, we might perhaps have been selfish enough to consult only each otherit was our right.138 Even though they were not represented equally, the small powers ought to be happy they were allowed to participate, and if they werent pleased with the arrangementwell, they were welcome to nominate no one at all.139 This, of course, they wouldnt do. Two days after the general meeting, the Small Powers gathered to select their delegates. Acting in concert, the South American nations
136

Preliminary Peace Conference, Protocol No. 3, Plenary Session of January 24, 1919 (minutes), in FRUS, vol. 3, 190. Calgeras also acknowledges the fact that hes going against orders in January 25, 1919, Dirio, PCOC, 72. 137 Preliminary Peace ConferenceJanuary 24, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 196. 138 Preliminary Peace ConferenceJanuary 24, 1919, FRUS, vol. 3, 196-7. 139 Magalhes to Gama, January 27, 1919, AHI 227/3/3.

 32 secured representation in three of the five commissions. Uruguay would discuss labor, and Cuba, navigation. As for Brazilit would sit on the commission on the League of Nations.140

PARIS: FEBRUARY 3, 1919 It is worth nothing that when Epitcio Pessoa arrived in Paris on January 27, 1919, the 1919 Paris Peace Conference had not yet begun. A proper peace conference includes all the belligerents, the winners as well as the losers, and Germany wouldnt join the Allies in France for another three months. The period between January and May witnessed merely a conference between the Allies and ourselves for the purpose of agreeing upon terms to offer Germany at the Peace Conference to be held later, Colonel Edward House, right-hand man to Woodrow Wilson, wrote in his diary.141 Yet the preliminary meetings were not merely bureaucratic proceedings. Consider the issue of the League of Nations: to have a seat on the League Commission was to have a hand on the Leagues design, and to have a hand on the Leagues design was to have a hand on the fate of the world. At least in theory. As it happened, much of the work of the commission was done by two men: Americas David Hunter Miller and Britains Lord Robert Cecil. Millers boss, Woodrow Wilson, made a point of joining the commissionthe League of Nations, after all, had been his pet projectbut his participation proved to be less than workmanlike. Gentlemen, he said at one meeting, I have no doubt that the next generation will be made up of men as intelligent as you or I, and I think we can trust the
140 141

Magalhes to Gama, January 28, 1919, AHI 227/3/3. Edward Mandell House, diary entry, March 4, 1919, in Edward Mandell House Papers (MS 466), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

 33 league to manage its own affairs.142 Miller and Cecil at least once stayed up until 4:00 a.m. only to resume work at 8:30, laboring restlessly over the questions that Wilson would have rather leave unanswered: Ought the League mandate arbitration in an international court? 143 Ought it enforce sanctions to maintain peace? Ought it call for disarmament? Countless drafts were produceda second Brit, Sir Cecil Hurst, would later join the effort, and Colonel House, Wilsons advisor, made himself a key player in the proceedingsand different answers were offered at different times.144 This, House noted in his diary, was the making of the most important human document that has ever been written.145 Epitcio, however, seemed disinterested when Cecil, Miller, and Hurst presented their work to the League Commission, on February 3, 1919. He dutifully relayed the drafts provisions in a telegram to Domcio, but he offered no opinion about them.146 Even the Portuguese delegate was vocal enough to earn a mention in Houses diary as a stupid gentleman, but Epitcio remained silent.147 Only one issue troubled him: the structure that Cecil, Miller, and Hurst proposed for the League. Article III of their draft called for a two-tiered organization. The five Great Powers, whose interests included all matters within the sphere of action of the League, would sit in an Executive Council. The remaining nations, those with special interests, would be relegated to a Body of Delegates.148
142 143

MacMillan, Paris 1919, 87. For the time they stayed up until 4:00 a.m. see House, diary entry, February 2, 1919. 144 House, diary entries, Janurary 28, 1919, January 30, 1919, and January 31, 1919. Peter Raffo, The Anglo-American Preliminary Negotiations for a League of Nations, in Journal of Contemporary History 9:4 (1974), 153-76. 145 House, diary entry, February 3, 1919. 146 Pessoa to Gama, February 5, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 147 House, diary entry, April 11, 1919. 148 Pessoa to Gama, February 5, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. First Meeting, Held at the Hotel Crillon, February 3, 1919, at 2.30 p.m. (minutes), in Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, 232.

 34 Pandi Calgeras was still bedridden and didnt attend that meeting, but if he had been present, he would have found these terms familiar. He had fought a similar battle before Epitcios arrival, when the Great Powers claimed general interests and monopolized the workings of the conference. Rui Barbosa, the liberal senator from Bahia, might have recognized this debate as well, having encountered it at The Hague. Given that Brazil was once again fighting for the cause of the small powers, one newspaper wrote, it is a shame that Rui Barbosa is absent from Paris.149 Surely the small powers had a most general interest in the League of Nations. Even Lloyd George had acknowledged that they had the most to gain out of a world ruled by law and not by might. Why, then, did the Great Powers insist on assigning them a lower status? When Epitcio and other small-power representatives raised these objections, the debate grew so warm that, after an hour, Lord Robert Cecil moved that we pass it up for the moment, House wrote in his diary. They adjourned that night a little before 11 p.m., without resolving the question.150 A week passed. The Great Powers knew they needed to open the Councilthe covenant stood no chance of being adopted otherwisebut they were unwilling to concede any more than two seats. Then, a day before the commissions work was to be presented before a general meeting, Epitcio took a stand. 151 Brazil could not accept the organization of the Executive council in the way shown in the present, he said in French. (Though he struggled with English, he was fluent in the other language of the

149

A Ausencia de Rui Barbosa, O Pais, March 8, 1919. Quoted by Rui in O Caso Internaticional (speech), April 4, 1919, OCRB, vol. 46, 241. 150 House, diary entry, February 6, 1919. 151 Pessoa to Gama. February 13, 1919. AHI 273/2/9.

 35 conference.152) True, there were political considerations at playthe Great Powers had won the war, after allbut it was neither equitable nor just that nations which were not considered Great Powers should have a representation which did not amount to even one Delegate per continent. In the very least, the Commission should adopt a structure suggested by the Americans earlier in the conference: five Delegates for the Great Powers and four for the others.153 The delegates from Greece and Portugal backed his proposal. Begrudgingly Robert Cecil gave in, insisting that this decision should be unanimously supported before the Conference by all the States represented on the Commission. 154 By the next morning, when Woodrow Wilson read the covenant at the general meeting, the language of special and general interests had been expunged from Article III: The Executive Council shall consist of representatives of the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan, together with representatives of four other States, members of the League. 155 This was Epitcios first victory in Paris. In Brazil, however, the press was more concerned with another issue being floated at the conference: the insertion of the Monroe Doctrine into the covenant of the League. Wilson began pushing the amendment after he presented the covenant before the U.S. Congress. His Republican opponents worried that the document invalidated the Monroe Doctrine, a long-standing tenant of American foreign policy that interpreted all European forays into the New World as acts of aggression, warranting American intervention. In the view of Republicans, the League of Nations was antithetical to this
152 153

Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 1, 125. Ninth Meeting, February 13, 1919, at 10:30 a.m. (minutes), in Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, 301. 154 Ninth Meeting, Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, 301. 155 Preliminary Peace Conference, Protocol No. 3, Plenary Session of February 14, 1919 (minutes), in FRUS, vol. 3, 231.

 36 principle. No less than six European nations would come to sit on the Leagues Executive Council. If that Council was to issue rulings on American countries, a Republican Senator said, it would control, whether it wills or no, the destinies of America.156 If this was the caseand it certainly seemed to beRepublicans simply could not endorse the covenant. Back in Paris, Wilson lobbied for an amendment to the effect that nothing in the covenant invalidated the Monroe Doctrine. There was opposition, first from the British, then from the French, both for political reasons, and also from the Japanese, who wanted a similar provision regarding their protectorate over the Far East.157 Several South American nations, too, cried foul.158 The Brazilians, however, kept quiet. The minutes of the commissions meetings show no comment from Epitcio as the amendment was introduced and later voted into the covenant.159 This makes sense. Meddling in the debate would have been impolitic. Epitcio needed the Americans good will to secure the Bleichrder money and the 46 German ships. But his silence was also a consequence of a larger current in Brazilian diplomacy. At the turn of the century, when coffee displaced rubber a the top of Brazils export economy, the countrys diplomats co-opted the Monroe Doctrine in the process of straitening ties with the United States, the greatest consumer of coffee.160 Pandi Calgeras himself had described the Doctrine as an integral part of Brazilian foreign
156

Willam E. Borah, The League of Nations: speech delivered in the Senate of the United States (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1921), 18. 157 MacMillan, Paris 1919, 96. 158 Estado de So Paulo, April 7, 1919. 159 Fourteenth Meeting, April 10, 1919, at 8 p.m. (minutes), in Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, 369-374. Fifteenth Meeting, April 11, 1919, at 8:30 p.m. (minutes), in Miller, Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2, 381-383. 160 Albert, South America and the First World War, 82. Burns, Unwritten Alliance, 146-159.

 37 policy, consisting of the most intimate collaboration between the two governments.161 Which is not to say all Brazilians shared those views. Rui Barbosa, for one, loathed the Monroe Doctrine. The Americas dont belong to the Americans, he once said.162 To him, the Doctrine was thinly veiled American imperialism, and this sentiment was echoed often in the more liberal opinion pages of 1919. Shortly after Wilsons amendment was approved, one editorialist for the Estado de So Paulo described the Monroe Doctrine as the great delusion of our foreign policy, a soothing sirens song, whose temptation we should resist with all our strength. He was, however, cordial towards Epitcio, who shared no blame for a set of ideas that has long distorted Brazilian policy abroad.163 Another Estado editorialist was less forgiving: by allowing the Monroe Doctrine into the Covenant, Brazilians had volunteered their wrists to shackles.164

PARIS: APRIL 29, 1919 Damn the ships, Epitcio must have thought at least once. Yes, he had won a victory at the League Commission, and yes, he had resolved the question of the money in the Bleichrder accounts. And yes, he had even bought a car, a deluxe Renault complete with a chauffeur, so the Brazilian delegates no longer had to walk everywhere.165 By and large, things were looking up. But the 46 German shipseles que se danem. Brazils first concrete claim hadnt been nearly so complicated. Securing So Paulos money had simply been a matter of presenting the case before the Financial
161 162

Joo Pandi Calgeras, Rio-Branco e a Poltica Exterior (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1916), 38. A Liga das Naes e a doutrina de Monroe, Estado de So Paulo, May 15, 1919. 163 A Liga das Naes e a doutrina de Monroe, Estado de So Paulo, May 15, 1919. 164 Estado de So Paulo, August 19, 1919. 165 Pessoa to Gama, February 27, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. Pessoa to Gama, undated, in OCEP, 13.

 38 Commission, which sided with Brazil.166 Thus, Article 263 of the Treaty of Versailles read: Germany gives a guarantee to the Brazilian Government that all sums representing the sale of coffee belonging to the State of Sao Paolo [sic] in the ports of Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp and Trieste, which were deposited with the Bank of Bleichroder at Berlin, shall be reimbursed together with interest at the rate or rates agreed upon.167 Securing the 46 German ships, however, had proved more challenging. Never mind the legal standing of the confiscationor requisition, or utilization. Terminology was itself a hurdle, but it was not nearly as problematic as the fact that the French now seemed bent on keeping the thirty vessels they had leased from Brazil in 1917. France had first proposed an extension. The ships would continue to fly Brazilian flags, but they would remain under French command for an additional six months.168 Given our condition as an exporting country and the insufficiency of our means of transit, it may seem misguided to extend the agreement, Epitcio telegraphed to Domcio. However, in my opinion, other reasons advise the measure. He cited two. First, the Brazilian Lloyd, to whom the ships belonged, was presently in disarray. The wars reshuffling of international commerce had wreaked havoc on the Lloyds cumbersome bureaucracy, and the company would be ill prepared to handle thirty additional vessels. A one-year extension, Epitcio wrote, would allow the Lloyd to regroup. The second reason was strategic. Epitcio knew that Brazils claim to the ships was legally precarious. The country had requisitioned the vessels while neutral, so the
166 167

Pessoa to Gama, April 29, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. The Versailles Treaty, June 28, 1919, online at The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/partix.asp. 168 Gama to Pessoa, April 1, 1919, AHI 273/2/10.

 39 measure wasnt an act of war, and the eminent domain argument offered in the foreign ministrys dossier was, in essence, theft by the state. If Brazil hoped to keep the ships, it needed the good will of the Great Powers. Extending the lease would bring France to our side, committing her to defend our common interests, Epitcio wrote. On the other hand, Refusing the offer might compel her to acquire the ships by other means.169 He had even heard rumors that France might appropriate the ships (which legally were still German) as reparations for war damages.170 With this in mind, Epitcio arranged an exploratory meeting with Paul Gauthier, a secretary in the French delegation. On the arranged date, a Saturday in late March, Gauthier appeared flanked by three merchant marine officers and Paul Claudel, the former French minister in Rio. The five Frenchmen seemed ready finalize the deal, but Epitcio protested: he had no authority to negotiate and wanted only to know Frances terms so as to relay them to Domcio. Fair enough, Gauthier responded. The terms were these: France agreed to extend the lease, but on the condition that Brazil pay 40 million Francs in maintenance costs and an additional 25 million in late fees, as Brazil had taken too long to make the ships available (one of the leased vessels, the Santos, was still anchored in a Brazilian port at the time). France would pay nothing upfront for the arrangement (freight could be arranged for individual trips), and it demanded the ships for a full year, not six months. Finally, Brazil could keep its flag on the masts, but the ships would be manned entirely by French crews.171 The terms were aggressively one-sided, but Epitcio found them agreeable. The maintenance costs, he told Domcio, had been provided for in the original contract, and
169 170

Pessoa a Gama, March 20, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. Pessoa a Gama, March 29, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 171 Pessoa a Gama, March 29, 1919, AHI 273/2/9.

 40 the demand for shipping had declined with the end of the war, so France had good reason to refuse an upfront fee. And if the French didnt get their way, he reminded Domcio, they might challenge Brazils tenuous legal claim. Ceding the ships for a year was preferable to losing them altogether.172 Domcio agreed, but he took issue with the demand that the crews be exclusively French. The public would balk at this measure, he wrote.173 They could negotiate a provision to add Brazilian officers and sailors to the crews, but this would require congressional approval, and Domcio preferred to keep the matter within the ministry, shielded from public scrutiny. He was hopeful, he wrote, that the two governments, in some skillful manner, might reach some agreement on the matter.174 (He later told one reporter that the delegation had been working silently out of necessity.175) Not a week had passed before France forced Epitcios hand. Working with the British, the French introduced a plan to pool all captured German merchant ships and redistribute them among the Allies, ton for ton, in proportion to each countrys losses.176 This arrangement made sense for Britain and France, both of which had lost more ships than they had captured. But for Brazil, whose captures greatly exceeded its losses, the plan was disastrous:

172 173

Pessoa a Gama, March 29, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. Gama to Pessoa, April 1, 1919, AHI 273/2/10. 174 Gama to Pessoa, April 2, 1919, AHI 273/2/10. 175 A Aco do Brasil na Conferencia, Estado de So Paulo, May 7, 1919. 176 Gama to Pessoa, April 5, 1919, AHI 273/2/10.

 41 LOST TONNAGE ENGLAND FRANCE UNITED STATES BRAZIL 7,740,000 950,000 389,489 25,000 CAPTURED TONNAGE 400,000 45,000 628,000 216,000177

The United States also stood to lose from this arrangement. If the Allies were made to share the ships, its surplus might quickly become a deficit, so Wilson protested. Americans had a legitimate right to those vessels, he told his colleagues at the Council of Four, having secured their title to them by law. He continued, The ships had been so damaged that millions of dollars had had to be spent on their repairs and new methods that had to be devised. Throughout, these ships had been used for the indispensable transport of the American armies to France. It would not be tolerable to public opinion in the United States if their title to these ships was not recognized.178 There was a great difference between the value of ships to Great Britain and the United States, Lloyd George responded. It was like the value of ships to a fisherman compared with ships to a swell yachtsman, he said. Great Britain lived on ships.179 Wilson countered: the Americans had lost not only ships but thousands of lives. In other countries, such lives were being provided for by reparation arrangements.

177

Notes of a Meeting Which Took Place at President Wilsons House in the Place des Etats-Unis, Paris, on Wednesday, April 23, 1919, at 4 p.m. (minutes), in FRUS, vol. 5, 162. Eugenio Vargas, p. 41, offers slightly different figures for every country except Brazil. England would have lost 8,000,000 tons and captured 500,000; France would have lost 930,000 and captured 50,000; and the United States would have lost 430,489 and captured 628,000. In this essay, I choose to use the figures that the statesmen in Paris had been using, as this more accurately reflect their perception of the debate over the ships. 178 Notes of a MeetingApril 23, 1919, FRUS, vol. 5, 161-2. 179 Notes of a MeetingApril 23, 1919, FRUS, vol. 5, 162.

 42 America had claimed no reparations for herself. All she wanted were the ships.180 Lloyd George pondered. Fine, he said at last. The British would enter into an arrangement with the Americans. The Brazilians, however, had no claim for walking off with so many ships, he said.181 They had seized the vessels thanks only to the Great Powers, which had forced the Germans to seek shelter in Brazilian ports.182 The Council of Four held that meeting, as most of their meetings, in Wilsons home at No. 11 Place des tats-Unis, in a book-lined study decorated with paintings that hung in heavy frames.183 In attendance were Wilson and Lloyd George and their French counterpart, Georges Clemenceau.184 (Vittorio Orlando, the Italian prime minister and fourth member of the Council, had, by April, absented himself from their meetings.185) The discussion between Wilson and Lloyd George took place behind closed doors, meaning that Epitcio wasnt privy to their agreement. Not until the following day, when he was called before the Reparations Commission, did Epitcio discover that the British had agreed to exempt the Americans from the pooling scheme.186 Immediately he tried to obtain a similar arrangement. Over a dinner meeting on April 29, 1919, Colonel House, Wilsons advisor, promised to represent Brazil on the matter, assuring Epitcio that the issue was by no means resolved.187 Lloyd George, despite his unsympathetic position, also said no decision had been reached.188 But Louis
180 181

Notes of a MeetingApril 23, 1919, FRUS, vol. 5, 162. Notes of a MeetingApril 23, 1919, FRUS, vol. 5, 162. 182 Pessoa to Gama, May 2, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 183 Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement: Written from his unpublished and personal material (New York: Doubleday, Page, & Company, 1923), 156. Z-MDD-WW-18 (photograph), 1919, Woodrow Wilson Collection, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton Unitersity, online at http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/portfolio/ww/fi/00000011.htm. 184 Notes of a MeetingApril 23, 1919, FRUS, vol. 5, 155. 185 MacMillan, Paris 1919, 279-305. 186 Pessoa to Gama, April 24, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 187 Pessoa to Gama, April 29, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 188 Pessoa to Gama, May 2, 1919, AHI 273/2/9.

 43 Loucheur, Clemenceaus chief economic advisor, repeatedly told Epitcio that the matter had been settled: with the exception the vessels in American hands, all captured ships would be redistributed among the Allies.189 The French, it seemed, had got their way. That Epitcio asked for Houses intervention is telling. Given the precariousness of Brazils claim, the case of the ships can only be solved by political measures, Epitcio wrote to Domcio. But this proved difficult. You need only consider that England lost 8,000,000 tons in ships and captured only 500,000, he wrote. Brazil lost only 25,000 and captured 200,000, and this thanks only to the Allied efforts. 190 (The French press, too, made a point of reminding the public of these figures.191) If it were allowed to keep the ships, Brazil would be the only belligerent to tally no losses in the war.192 Politically, this was an unsellable position, which is why Epitcio went to House. As Woodrow Wilsons right-hand man, House was the conferences ultimate powerbrokerthe small knot hole through which must pass many great events, in the words of one observer in Paris.193 When the two men met over dinner at the end of April, the Brazilian knew that securing the ships would require some heavy politicking. Epitcio showed no signs of recognizing the hypocrisy of the Brazilian position. Brazil had come to the conferencehad entered the war, reallyinvoking the tenets of international liberalism: rule of law; equality of nations; respect for national sovereignty. Its public, its press, its intellectual elite had bought wholeheartedly into that rhetoric, but its representatives in Paris now showed themselves willing to abandon liberalism in pursuit of their interests. Its no surprise that Domcio wanted to keep the ordeal from the
189 190

Pessoa to Gama, April 29, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. Pessoa to Gama, May 2, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. Pessoa to Gama, May 4, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 191 Pessoa to Gama, June 2, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 192 Pessoa to Gama, May 4, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 193 MacMillan, Paris 1919, 17.

 44 public. Brazils claim on the 46 ships was legally unfounded. It would be found criminal if examined in a court. This fact is implicit in Epitcios decision to pursue a political solution. When pressed, the delegation proved itself willing to deal behind closed doors, enlisting, if necessary, the help of Colonel House, politicker extraordinaire. For the Brazilians in Paris, interests trumped principles. And it bears noting the interests at hand: 46 merchant ships. For all their outrage at the label of power with special interests, the Brazilian delegates showed themselves terribly myopic. The world awaited remaking, Domcio had told Calgeras in December of 1918. The statesmen gathered in Paris were engaging with hugely important questionshow ought the world handle German colonial possessions? What attitude ought it take towards Russias new Bolshevik regime? How ought it ensure the freedom of navigation? How ought it enforce peace?but the record shows no Brazilian participation in any of these debates. The world was being turned upside down and a new order was being inaugurated, Colonel House wrote in his diary.194 The Brazilians seemed to want no part of it. Rather, they obsessed over ships46 of them, stolen from Germany. As Epitcio left House after dinner that night in April, the American promised he would do everything that was possible to help.195

PARIS: JUNE 3, 1919 Epitcio didnt stay in Paris long enough to see the issue resolved. By June, the British had given up on the pooling scheme, and the French had agreed to recognize the
194 195

House, diary entry, January 31, 1919. House, diary entry, April 29, 1919.

 45 Brazilian claim to the ships, on the condition that Brazil would sell to France the thirty vessels already in her possession. This was even better than simply keeping the ships, wrote Epitcio: with the profits of the sale, Brazil could buy newer ships better suited for its ports, and these could be purchased gradually, so as to allow the Brazilian Lloyd time to maneuver its bureaucracy around the enlarged fleet.196 The arrangement was more than satisfactory. True, the French had immediately begun to drag their heels, refusing to put ink to paper, but Epitcio felt the deal would soon be finalized.197 It seems, therefore, that my stay here is not crucial, he wrote.198 (Pandi Calgeras left Paris shortly thereafter, on similar grounds.199 They were both wrong: it would be another year and a half before the French finally signed a contract.200) So on Tuesday, June 3, 1919, Epitcio and his family departed Paris, amidst much fanfare. Even Georges Clemenceau, flanked by his foreign minister and Raymond Poincar, the French president, made an appearance at the train station.201 From the port town of Bolougne-sur-Mer, Epitcio would cross the Channel to England, and from there, he would voyage to Lisbon.202 Then he would sail to the United States, in time for the Fourth of July, and after a jaunt to Canada, he would return home to Brazil. (The French, perhaps eager to see him off their continent, made a cruiser available for the transatlantic leg of his voyage.203) The telegram that reported his departure referred to him as Presidente
196 197

Pessoa to Gama, June 1, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. Pessoa to Gama, June 2, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 198 Pessoa to Gama, June 2, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 199 Calgeras to Gama, July 3, 1919. AHI 273/2/9. 200 Os Antigos Navios Allemaes, Estado de So Paulo, December 1, 1920. 201 Regis to Gama, June 5, 1919, AHI 273/2/9. 202 Pessoa to Gama, June 9, 1919, in vol. 14 of Obras Completas de Epitcio Pessoa (Instituto Nacional do Livro: Rio de Janeiro, 1961), 51. 203 Pessoa to Gama, May 25, 1919, AHI 273/2/9.

 46 Epitcio.204 As it happened he was president-elect, the winner of the April contest that followed Rodrigues Alves death. He was elected in absentia but with the backing of the caf com leite elite from So Paulo and Minas Gerais, named him as their official candidate at a national convention of regional Republican parties held in February.205 Epitcio Pessoa is the candidate of the oligarchies, wrote the Estado de So Paulo at the time.206 His opponent: the liberal stalwart Rui Barbosa, who ran on a moderate but reformist platform.207 Surprisingly, his campaign seldom touched on the conference. Foreign affairs, it seems, were no longer the causes clbres they had been in 1917. Aside from a workers rally in So Paulo, held to protest the exclusion of the Russian Bolsheviks from the League of Nations, no shows of public opinion were loud enough to warrant much press coverage.208 And though editorialists occasionally opined about the Monroe Doctrine, most of their pieces concerned domestic politics. It wasnt long before the Estado de So Paulo began to report the conference much like it reported soccer: dutifully and daily, but with no commentary. Rui, nonetheless, still found occasion to deliver some sharp criticism of the Brazilians in Paris. It was to be expected, in a time such as this, with internationalism in vogue, that our deceitful politics would also internationalize, he told the Chamber of Commerce in Rio. He added: Each of the peoples has its own way of being great. Great, like France and her Clemenceau. Great, like England and her Lloyd George. Great, like

204 205

Pessoa to Gama, June 9, 1919, OCEP, vol. 14, 51. A Successo Presidencial, Estado de So Paulo, February 27, 1919. 206 A attitude da politica paulista, Estado de So Paulo, March 4, 1919. Similar sentiments appear in Organisao putrefacta, Estado de So Paulo, March 1, 1919. 207 Consuelo Novais Sampaio, preface to vol. 46, book 3, of OCRB, xx. 208 Manifestao Operria, Estado de So Paulo, July 21, 1919.

 47 the United States and their Wilson. Great, like Brazilin her deceit.209 Rui, who had championed a war for liberal principles, surely saw the delegations performance as vapid. While the world was being remade, Brazil had busied itself with the fate of the 46 ships. The speech was well received; the admittedly pro-Rui Estado de So Paulo called it marvelous.210 An earlier Estado piece read, There is no question that the nation wants Rui Barbosa to ascend to the presidency of the Republicrarely have we seen a movement of opinion so spontaneous, so generalized, and so vehement.211 But Rui was challenging the candidato oficial, which meant he faced the full weight of the So PauloMinas political machine. He lost in a landslide, garnering little over thirty percent of the vote.212 Epitcio, from the tiny far-off state of Paraba, was an unusual choice for the caf com leite oligarchs. (He was in fact the first and last northeasterner to serve as president in the Old Republic.213) His candidacy had been a compromise, put forth because the state governors of So Paulo and Minas were both too young, and because the mineiros had allied with a third state, Rio Grande do Sul, to oppose a paulista candidate.214 The oligarchs struck a deal: they would to name Epitcio, a prominent man from a small state, to serve as a fill-in until the end of Rodrigues Alves term. Thereafter, paulistas and mineiros were to take turns in the presidential palace.215 The caf com leite alliance, however, wouldnt last long in post-war Brazil. Peace
209 210

Rui Barbosa, As Classes Conservadoras (speech), March 8, 1919, in OCRB, vol. 46, book 1, 36-39. Correio da Manh, March 13, 1919, reproduced in Estado de So Paulo, March 14, 1919. 211 Notas e informaes, Estado de So Paulo, February 4, 1919. 212 Streeter, Epitcio Pessoa, 110. 213 Fausto, Society and Politics, 295. 214 Streeter, Epitcio Pessoa, 105-6. 215 Burns, History of Brazil, 306.

 48 saw the resumption of normal commerce and a temporary coffee boom, but this was soon replaced by a general slump in commodity prices. Making matters worse was the fact that, even as world demand for coffee leveled off, new planting continued in So Paulo, so the market became saturated.216 By 1920, coffee prices were so low that Epitcio found it necessary to resume an old valorization scheme, through which the federal government bought and warehoused coffee from the states to increase demand and, consequently, prices.217 The precarious export markets aggravated rifts among the oligarchs, while the federal governments efforts to buttress the coffee economy spurred jealousy from other states. In 1929, Rio Grande do Sul spearheaded a national Aliana Liberal to exploit the faults in the caf com leite machine. Their candidate, Getlio Vargas, ran on a platform that, while by no means radical, bore the standard of reform.218 He was defeated by the oligarchs in the election, leading the disgruntled younger members of the Aliana Liberal to forge a friendship with their peers in the Brazilian army, themselves reformists who had challenged the federal government in several small rebellions throughout the twenties. In October of 1930, the military deposed the president, and Getlio Vargas seized the office. His 15-year administration would see power centralized under the federal government and the state oligarchies divested of their influence. So ended the Old Republic, and so ended the era of caf com leite politics.219 Of course, Epitcio had no way of knowing these things at the time. He had no way of knowing them as he stood with his family on the deck of the Idaho on July 21,
216 217

Warren Dean, Economy, in Brazil: Empire and Republic 1822-1930, 230. Burns, History of Brazil, 311-2. 218 Fausto, Society and Politics, 304. 219 Fausto, Soceity and Politics, 304-307.

 49 1919, and waved to the crowds aboard the green-and-yellow-draped ships assembled in Guanabara Bay; no way of knowing them as he watched the hydroplanes maneuver overhead, their roaring engines periodically drowned by the horns of the steamers and dreadnaughts; no way of knowing them as he drove down Rio Branco Avenue in a fourhorse carriage and greeted the cariocas with waves of his hat; no way of knowing them as he entertained reporters in his home after dinner, answering questions about civil service reform and the fate of the military but not about Paris; no way of knowing them as he went to bed that night, home for the first time in seven months; and no way of knowing them as woke up the next morning, ready to lead Brazil down the path of civilization, of liberty, of justice.220 _______________________________________________________________________ World Count: 12,453.

220

Account of his arrival in Rio from O Sr. Epitacio Pessao, Estado de So Paulo, July 22, 1919. Quote from Epitcio Pessoa, Resposta ao Rei Alberto, no banquete, de 8 de maio, no Palcio Real de Bruexellas (speech), May 8, 1919, OCEP, vol. 14, 84.

 50 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY Brazilians in Paris: 1919 was not the essay I originally intended to write. I had planned to build my senior essay on a seminar paper I had written for Adam Tooze, my advisor. In that paper, I argued that Brazil had entered World War I alongside the United States in order to position itself as a co-hegemon of the American continent. Adam encouraged me to stretch that argument into the 1920s, exploring Brazilian participation at the Paris Peace Conference and the League of Nationsthis was to be my senior essay. It wasnt long, however, before I discovered that the Brazilians in Paris didnt count continental co-hegemony among the items in their agenda. Their interests were far more modest: 46 ships they had captured from the Germans, and money owed to the state of So Paulo for coffee sold in Berlin. This seemed odd. Given that the other statesmen assembled in Paris thought themselves to be in the business of remaking the world, I felt that Brazils myopia at the conference was a story worth telling. I could find no volume or paper that delved into Brazils presence at the Paris Peace Conference. The participation of small non-European powers has not been a particularly popular topic among scholars of the conference. Marget MacMillan, for example, pays little attention to them in Paris 1919. Erez Manelas Wilsonian Moment is an exception to the rule, but Manelas focus on anticolonial nationalism blinds him to countries like Brazil, past colonialism by 1919. My essay also runs counter to Manelas central argument: whereas he sees domestic political turmoil as a consequence of Paris, I view Brazilian participation in Paris as consequence of domestic politics. Brazils myopia

 51 at the conference was a symptom of a broken political system. This systems collapse a decade later was due not to international liberal rhetoric but to faults in the system itself. I turned, next, to scholars of Brazilian foreign relations, but among them, too, the Paris Peace Conference appears to be an unpopular topic. The 1910s and 1920s stand as a gap in scholarship, preceded by works on the Baron of Rio Branco, the Brazilian foreign minister until 1912 and architect of Brazilian-American rapprochement (E. Bradford Burns Unwritten Alliance is the most important book in that category), and followed by works on the foreign relations of the Vargas era, which culminated with Brazilian participation in World War II. General studies of Brazilian diplomacy (by Clodoaldo Bueno, Amado Luiz Cervo, Carlos Miguel Delgado de Carvalho, and Jos Honrio Rodrigues and Ricardo A.S. Seitenfus) skim over the conference. Eugnio Vargas Garcia dedicates a chapter to the conference in O Brasil e a Liga das Naes, but he takes a birds-eye view, staying away from details, and he fails to discuss Brazils participation at the conference with respect to domestic politics. In short, I could find no scholarly works that made an in-depth exploration of the Brazilians in Paris. My essay, therefore, relies heavily on primary sources. Chief among these were documents found in Rio de Janeiros Arquivo Histrico do Itamaraty, where I spent about ten days. The archives of the Estado de So Paulo and the State Departments Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, both available online, were also extremely useful. The Estado archive gave me a glimpse into public sentiment about World War I, while the FRUS papers offered an institutional record of the conferences goings-on. Many of my primary sources were in Portuguese, and the translations are my own.

 52 Secondary sources were useful in discussing context: the conference writ large and Brazilian domestic politics. On the conference, MacMillans Paris 1919 and Adam Toozes Peace Without Victory, which I read in manuscript form, were my main sources. On Brazilian domestic politics, Leslie Bethells Brazil: Empire and Republic, 1822-1930 and Harry Bernsteins Modern and Contemporary Latin America were particularly useful. Recently, the oligarchic interpretation of the Brazilian Old Republic has been brought into question by scholars like Mauricio Font, who call attention to moments when state behavior didnt align with the interests of coffee planters. While these are valuable contributions to our understanding of the Old Republic, I believe that the Brazilian experience in Paris shows the extent to which coffee interests affected foreign policy. My bibliography also features two books entirely unrelated to my subject: Simon Schamas Dead Certainties and Robert Rosenstones Mirror in the Shrine. I include them because they were valuable models of narrative history, and I tried to emulate them in Brazilians in Paris. I also include two works of fiction, Erich Maria Remarques All Quiet on the Western Front and Henri Barbusses Under Fire. They show that the war was immediate to the men who lived through it, and I tried to keep that in mind while writing my essay. Im a believer in the truism that it takes a village, and I owe my village a few thanks. First and foremost I must thank Adam Tooze for first introducing me to the politics of the Great War in the summer of 2011 and for encouraging me to tell the story of the Brazilians in Paris. It was over the course of several pilgrimages from my apartment on Chapel Street to his office on Hillhouse that this essay took shape. In

 53 particular, Adam prodded me away from the realist approach I had been taking to my subject. He opened my eyes to what it means to be a liberalshowed me that scraps of paper matterand this was hugely influential. (I must also thank him for not losing faith; I cant say I was always the best-prepared advisee.) As for the rest of my village: this essay is the culmination of my Yale education. It incorporates the lessons Ive learned from courses related to Brazilian history and the history of the Great War, but also the lessons I learned from writing non-fiction, both inside and outside the classroom. I think that writing about people, as I do in Brazilians in Paris, requires that I care about my subjects on a fundamental level, and developing this skill required the mentorship of great writing teachers. So I must thank Kim Shirkhani, for introducing me to creative non-fiction when I was a freshman; Anne Fadiman, for giving me the push I needed to think of myself as a writer; Becky Conekin, for teaching me how to weave narratives out of old newspapers; John Demos, for introducing me to narrative history; and Steven Brill, for teaching me that a sources silence is as significant as anything he or she might say. And I must thank everyone who lent a helping hand while I was writing Brazilian in Paris: Oscar Soares, my father, for flying me to Rio so I could visit the diplomatic archives; Rodrigo Senne dos Santos and Cristina Pereira Correia, for hosting me in Rio; the staff of the diplomatic archives, for entertaining my every request; Paulo Ricardo Junqueira Assis, for letting me use his subscription to access the online archives of the Estado de So Paulo; the student tutors at the Yale Writing Center for reading and critiquing my essay; Nikita Lalwani, for answering my shameless request for additional editors; Sophie Nguyen, for giving me excellent advice on my introduction; Lorraine

 54 Boakye, class of 2010, for providing guidance as I wrote my essay and indulging me as I whined about footnotes; and Angela and Claudio Nascimento, my mother and stepfather, for supporting me through this process, for reading my first draft, and for sending me to Yale.

 55

BIBLIOGRAPHY ABBREVIATIONS Where primary sources were published in a collection, the footnotes refer on first mention to the collection by its full title and thereafter by an abbreviation. Bibliographical information follows the abbreviation list.

BGB: The Brazilian Green Book: Consisting of diplomatic documents relating to Brazils attitude with regard to the European war, 1914-1917. FRUS: Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States: The Paris Peace conference, 1919. OCEP: Obras Completas de Epitcio Pessoa. OCRB: Obras Completas de Rui Barbosa. PCOC: Pandi Calgeras na Opinio de seus Contemporneos.

PRIMARY SOURCES The American Presidency Project. Online by Gerhand Peters and John T. Woolley. University of California, Santa Barbara. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws. Arquivos Histricos do Itamaraty. Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations. Rio de Janeiro. Barbosa, Rui. Problemas de direito internacional. London: Jas. Truscott & Son, 1916. Borah, Willam E. The League of Nations: speech delivered in the Senate of the United States. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1921. The Brazilian Green Book: Consisting of diplomatic documents relating to Brazils

 56 attitude with regard to the European war, 1914-1917. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1918. Calgeras, Joo Pandi. Rio-Branco e a Poltica Exterior. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1916. Convention V: Respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers and Persons in Case of War on Land. The Hague. 18 October 1907. International and Humanitarian Law: Treaties and Documents. International Committee of the Red Cross. Online at http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/200?opendocument. Domcio da Gama. Photograph. Undated. Academia Brasileira de Letras. Accessed March 29, 2013. http://www.academia.org.br/abl/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?sid=307. Edward Mandell House Papers (MS 466). Manuscripts and Archives. Yale University Library. Estado de So Paulo. 1875-Present. Acervo do Estado de So Paulo. Online at: http://acervo.estadao.com.br/. Gama, Domcio da, Frederico Affonso de Carvalho, Hermes da Fonseca and Lauro Mller. The Neutrality Rules Adopted by Brazil. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 60 (1915): 147-154. Girtin, Thomas. View of the Tuileries and Bridge. Drawing. 1802. Accession number B1981.25.2613. Yale Center for British Art. Girtin, Thomas. View of the Palais des Tuileries and the Louvre from the Quai dOrsay. Drawing. 1801-2. ID number 11784. British Museum. Lauzanne, Stphane. The Mirror of the Quai dOrsay. The North American Review

 57 216:802 (1922): 323-331. Lyra, Heitor. Minha vida diplomtica. Lisboa: Centro do Livro Brasileiro: 1972. Miller, David Hunter. The Drafting of the Covenant. New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1928. Obras Completas de Epitcio Pessoa. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1961. Obras Completas de Rui Barbosa. Rio de Janeiro: Fundao Casa de Rui Barbosa, 1968. Pandi Calgeras na Opinio de seus Contemporneos. So Paulo: Typ. Siqueira, 1934. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States. Washington: Department of State, 1942. Online by the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections. http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/FRUS. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 1879-1922. ProQuest: Historical Newspapers Complete. The Versailles Treaty. June 28, 1919. The Avalon Project. Yale Law School. Online at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/partix.asp. Wall Street Journal. 1889-1922. ProQuest: Historical Newspapers Complete. Z-MDD-WW-18. Photograph. 1919. Woodrow Wilson Collection. Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library. Princeton University. Online at http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/portfolio/ww/fi/00000011.htm.

SECONDARY SOURCES Abranches, Dunshee de. Rio Branco e a Potica Exterior do Brasil (1902-1912). Rio de Janeiro: 1945. Albert, Bill. South America and the First World War: The Impact of the War on Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

 58 Alexander, Robert J. Brazilian Tenentismo. The Hispanic American Historical Review 36:2 (1965): 229-242. Baker, Ray Stannard. Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement: Written from his unpublished and personal material. New York: Doubleday, Page, & Company, 1923. Bandeira, Moniz. Presena dos Estados Unidos no Brasil: Dois sculos de histria. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilizao Brasileira, 1973. Barbusse, Henri. Under Fire. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Bernstein, Harry. Modern and Contemporary Latin America. Chicago: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1952. Bueno, Clodoaldo and Amado Luiz Cervo. Histria da Poltica Exterior do Brasil. So Paulo: Editora Atica, 1992. Bueno, Clodoaldo. Poltica Externa da Primeira Repblica: Os Anos de Apogeu de 1902 a 1918. So Paulo: Paz e Terra, 2003. Burns, E. Bradford. A History of Brazil. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Burns, E. Bradford. The Unwritten Alliance: Rio-Branco and Brazilian-American Relations. New York, Columbia University Press, 1966. Calgeras, Joo Pandi. A History of Brazil. Translated by Percy Alvin Martin. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963. Carvalho, Carlos Miguel Delgado de. Histria Diplomtica do Brasil. So Paulo: Editora Companhia Nacional, 1959. Cervo, Amado Luiz and Clodoaldo Bueno. Histria da Poltica Exterior do Brasil. So Paulo: Editora tica, 1992.

 59 Fausto, Boris. Society and Politics. In Brazil: Empire and Republic, 1822-1930. Edited by Leslie Bethell, 257-309. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Font, Mauricio A. Coffee Planters, Politics, and Development in Brazil. Latin American Research Review 22:3 (1987): 69-90. Glade, William. Latin America and the international economy, 1870-1914. In vol. 4 of The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. Graham, Richard. Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil, 1850-1914. London: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991. New York: Vintage Books, 1996. Lins, Alvaro. Rio-Branco (O Baro do Rio-Branco): Biografia pessoal e Histria poltica. So Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1965. Luebke, Frederick C. Germans in Brazil: A comparative history of conflict during World War I, 1987. MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: six months that changed the world. New York: Random House, 2002. Maddison, Angus. World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2001. Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Napoleo, Aluizio. O Segundo Rio-Branco. Rio de Janeiro: 1940. Napoleo, Aluizio. Rio-Branco e as Relaes entre o Brasil e os Estados Unidos.

 60 Ministrio das Relaes Exteriores, 1945. Pedersen, Susan. Back to the League of Nations. The American Historical Review 112:4 (2007): 1091-1117. Perissinotto, Renato Monseff. State and Coffee Capital in So Paulos Export Economy (Brazil 1889-1930). Journal of Latin American Studies 35:1 (2003): 1-23. Raffo, Peter. The Anglo-American Preliminary Negotiations for a League of Nations. Journal of Contemporary History 9:4 (1974), 153-76. Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Rodrigues, Jos Honrio and Ricardo A.S. Seitenfus. Uma Histria Diplomtica do Brasil, 1531-1945. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilizao Brasileira, 1995. Rosenstone, Robert A. Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Santos de Carvalho, Elizabeth. O Baro do Rio Branco e Arajo Jorge: Vidas que se cruzam no projeto da Revista Americana (1909-1919). Paper presented at the XXVI Simpsio Nacional de Histria, ANPUH-Brasil, So Paulo, July 2011. Available online at: http://www.snh2011.anpuh.org/resources/anais/14/1301076317_ARQUIVO_ORi oBrancoeAraujoJorge.pdf Schama, Simon. Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations). New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Streeter, Michael. Epitcio Pessoa. London: Haus Publishing, 2010. Tiller, Ann Quiggins. The Igniting SparkBrazil, 1930. The Hispanic American

 61 Historical Review 45:3 (1965): 384-392. Tooze, Adam. Peace Without Victory. Penguin. Upcoming. Vargas Garcia, Eugenio. O Brasil e a Liga das Naes (1919-1926): vencer ou no perder. Porto Alegre: Editora da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2000. Vargas Garcia, Eugnio. Cronologia das Relaes Internacionais do Brasil. So Paulo: Editora Alfa-Omega, 2000. Viana Filho, Luiz. A Vida do Baro do Rio Branco. Rio de Janeiro: Libraria Jos Olympio Editora, 1959. Villaa, Antnio Carlos. Perfil de um Estadista da Repblica: Ensaio biogrfico do Baro do Rio-Branco. Rio de Janeiro: 1945. Villafae G. Santos, Lus Cludio. O dia em que adiaram o Carnaval: Poltica externa e a construo do Brasil. So Paulo: Editora UNESP, 2010. Wirth, John D. Tenentismo in the Brazilian Revolution of 1930. The Hispanic American Historical Review 44.2 (1964): 161-179. Zuckerman, Larry. Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I. New York: New York University Press, 2004.