Germanness, Civilization, and Slavery: Southern Brazil as German Colonial Space (1819-1888

This dissertation examines how discourses concerning slavery and civilization helped construct Southern Brazil as a colonial space in German-language sources between 1819 and 1888. Germanophone authors in both Europe and Brazil presented Portuguese-Brazilians as rendered unwilling to and incapable of effectively developing their country due to their alleged dependence on slave labor. German settlers, according to German nationalists, would remake the Portuguese-Brazilians into industrious and effective examples of civilization, thereby presenting Brazil as not only wanting German colonists, but also as needing them to advance. In German-language presentations of Southern Brazil, settlers remained allegedly free of the effects of slavery, either through their refusing to own slaves or through exercising a civilizing influence on their slaves. However, German nationalists excluded Afro-Brazilians as a group from the German civilizing mission in the region, asserting that the state and slave owners, not the German-Brazilian population, were responsible for improving Afro-Brazilians' character. This dissertation further examines how these representations of German settlers in Southern Brazil served different social and political purposes for German nationalists on their respective sides of the Atlantic. In this way, this dissertation uncovers how discourses of slavery connected to the development of German colonialism at both the transnational and local levels.