The Ragamuffin War and the Making of Modern Brazil

The Ragamuffin War and the Making of Modern Brazil, 1835-1845

The Ragamuffin War was the longest and most threatening regional rebellion in Brazilian imperial history, yet it has been largely unknown outside of southern Brazil. For nearly a decade, from 1835 to 1845, the province of Rio Grande do Sul fought to establish an independent republic, creating functioning governmental institutions, fielding effective military forces, and forcing the Brazilian Empire into a negotiated peace that would reshape the relationship between Brazils center and its periphery.

This comprehensive history examines the economic grievances that sparked the rebellion, the military campaigns that sustained it, and the political negotiations that ended it. More importantly, it recovers the suppressed histories that the romantic mythology of the "Heroic Decade" has obscured for generations. The republic proclaimed liberty while preserving slavery, recruited Black soldiers with promises of freedom that ended in betrayal at the Porongos Massacre, and depended on indigenous warriors whose contributions have been systematically erased from memory.

The book traces how former rebels became the empires most effective military force, how regional identity was constructed through selective memory, and how the conflicts unfinished business continues to shape contemporary Brazilian politics. Combining rigorous historical research with compelling narrative, this work reveals how empires and nations manage peripheral challenges and how societies construct comfortable myths from morally complex pasts.