Power, Patronage, and Political Violence: State Building on a Brazilian Frontier, 1822-1889 (review)
In this fine monograph, Judy Bieber revises our understanding of state building in nineteenth-century Brazil by decentering the traditional Rio-centric historical narrative of nineteenth-century Brazilian history and placing the periphery at the center of the narrative. She provides us with a rich empirical analysis of the Sao Francisco region in the north of Minas Gerais that also revises our understanding coronelismo. Bieber makes a strong case (for this region at least) that coronelismo was not a creation of the decentralization of the First Republic (1889-1930), but rather has its roots deep in the centralizing forces of the Empire (1822-89). This system of powerful local leaders tied to national and state political networks, she argues, emerges out of the consolidation of the nation-state by 1850.