Positivism, Modernization, and the Middle Class in Brazil
FTER 1850, as the national economy began to expand, the growth of Brazil's small and heretofore static urban bourgeoisie created major social stresses that traditionalist groups in control of the nation's affairs tended to ignore. Their refusal to promote the interests of the growing middle class spurred a rising wave of unrest which reformist leaders vied to harness.' Among the reformers, the positivists-followers of the teachings of the French philosopher Auguste Comte-soon became prominent. They gained prestige by criticizing the Roman Catholic Church, slavery, and the monarchy as constituting major restraints on national progress. Simultaneously these very institutions began to confront severe problems. First, the Paraguayan War (1864-1870) awakened the conscience of many who had supported the regime. Then, in 1868 a political crisis erupted which symbolized and mobilized the growing disaffection and culminated by unleashing the abolitionist and republican movements. Finally, in the early 1870s, Church and Crowil clashed. In this tumultuous atmosphere positivism attracted many with its promise "to end the anarchy" threatening their world and introduced the ideal of progress through order. By the early 1880s, when the Positivist Church of Brazil was founded, Comtian ideas were sweeping through the army and the law schools.2