681. Brazil: The Emperor’s Anthem (Part 5)

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So when it is time to digitise your income tax, you can bank on Lloyd's. Search Lloyd's business accounts to find out more. This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile. Right now, all of. All of Mint's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited. Go to mintmobile.com slash history. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months. Plan required, $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 gigabytes of hot space. Includes up to 20 bits of hot space. I think no question you'd rather go to the United States. Slavery in Brazil is hell on earth. It's awful. And what makes it so hellish? It's extremely violent. There's no abolitionist movement in Brazil or a very small abolitionist movement compared with that in the United States. It's much later. And is it also that the white exploitative class is much smaller relative to the number of slaves, so therefore they're more frightened? Exactly. More insecure. So even by the standards of the new world, slavery in Brazil is extraordinarily cruel. And actually, it's a great question. Where would you rather go? And there's a very simple answer. Most people, the single thing you want to do as a human being is to prolong your own life. And in the United States, as a slave, you die at the age of 35. As a slave in Brazil, you die at the age of 25. So there's your answer. And slave revolts, because it's very violent, because central authority is so weak, because institutions, so cloning institutions are so fragile, slave revolts are much more common in Brazil. So you have gigantic slave uprisings in the 18th and 19th centuries, which then provoke violent repression in their turn. So in their book on Brazilian history, Schwartz and Stalin described the Brazilian plantations as, quote, hell on earth, a frenzy of cruelty, a world of violence rooted in the figure of the master and his supreme power under the law, the marks of which were constantly registered on the bodies of his slaves. Now, why do I say all this when we're talking about the national anthem? Because the national anthem never mentioned slavery at all, obviously. It's not the kind of thing. It's not the kind of thing you would sing about, is it? No. The answer is that, as we've discussed in previous episodes, Germany, the United States, the Dutch Republic, and so on, a national anthem tells a story about a country and about the sort of the idea of the nation as a united family. It's very difficult to do that in Brazil because there's a fundamental instability that runs right through Brazilian history. Weak central authority, the legitimacy of authority was being questioned, a constant tension between the capital and the provinces, a sense that the next colossal rebellion, it's just around the corner. It's hard to tell a collective story about Brazil's history behind which everybody can unite. And that explains why, for so long, the national anthem didn't have any lyrics. Now, it wasn't a deliberate choice. It was because they couldn't actually agree on what story they were going to tell. I mean, I suppose if we think about so many of the anthems that we've done, the idea of kind of liberty and freedom is, I mean, a fairly common theme. Yes. And obviously that's impossible, isn't it? In the context of Brazil. You need an enemy often with an anthem. So for the Americans, it was the British. For the Dutch, it was the Spanish. You know, even though their anthem is quite ambiguous about their relationship with the Spanish, the Germans, it was actually the French. And for the British, it's the Spanish and the French. There's almost always an adversary. And in Brazil, as we'll come to, it is at first the Portuguese. So let's get to the story of why Brazil needs an anthem in the first place. So we start at the beginning of the 19th century. So in 1808, the government. The general of Brazil, as it's called, is the biggest state in Portugal's colonial empire. It's got about two and a half million people. So it's slightly smaller than Portugal itself. And a third of those people are slaves. There are two big cities, Rio and Salvador, and there the slave population is actually bigger, probably half in Rio, three quarters in Salvador. There's a sort of Wild West vibe to these places. So people who visit, say, streets of pothole, they're full of rubbish. It's all very chaotic and very violent. And one British visitor called Rio one of the dirtiest congregations of human beings under the sun. If you're a refined, elegant Portuguese courtier, Rio is basically the last place in the world that you would ever want to live. However, you are going to have to live there because in the summer of 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte had lost patience with Portugal's refusal to join his continental system. So this is the blockade, the embargo against Britain to try and drive Britain out of the Napoleonic wars and the French and the Spanish in November 1807. The French invaded Portugal and they basically stormed towards Lisbon. By the time they got to Lisbon, they found that the entire Portuguese royal family, the whole of the court, most of the political elite had gone. They had embarked on British ships under Sir Sidney Smith. We're talking about almost 15,000 people. And they had sailed off to Brazil, an absolutely unprecedented moment. You know, the entire court fleeing across the Atlantic. So it's a bit like the plans that were made to remove. The British royal family in 1940 to Canada, to Canada, in the US, exactly. Yeah. And chief among them are the queen of Portugal, Donna Maria, who, uh, is kind of out of public life. She's got massive depression and mental illness and her son and regent who is Joao and his son, Pedro. So three generations and off they all go and they established their court in Rio and here they run their empire in exile. So this is the first time in history that an empire has been governed, not from the metropolis, but from a colony that is in both the Western and the Southern hemisphere. So it's a sort of really interesting kind of transfer of power from Europe to the Americas. Anyway, 1815, Napoleon's beaten at Waterloo and a year later, Donna Maria, who is the sort of nominal queen of Portugal dies. So now her son Joao is Dom Joao the sixth king of Portugal. But he's still in Brazil. And he's still in Brazil. He's still in Rio. So Dom Joao is a very shy man. He's very religious. He basically spends all his time listening to sacred music. So listening to anthems. Yeah. He listens to anthems. Exactly. He's got constant panic attacks. He's always depressed. He wears the same coat all the time, even in bed. He loves this coat. I mean, I've got to say he does not sign the count of man. He could have taken on Napoleon. No, no, no. He's done well getting out to Rio. Yeah. And he is in no hurry to go back to Portugal. If he went back to Lisbon. The nobility, the political elite, political reformers, liberal constitutionalists would just be badgering him the whole time. But what about all the potholes in Rio and the rubbish? He doesn't mind the potholes because Rio also has lovely birds and he's a big nature lover. So he goes on expeditions to the countryside to look at the nature. Nice trees and plants, tropical shrubs. Is he a fan of volleyball? Exactly. I don't think they're doing volleyball at this point. So at the end of 1815, he elevates Brazil to the same. Level as Portugal. So he now rules a kingdom called the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. I don't know exactly why the Algarves are plural. Maybe listeners can explain that to me. Now, back in Portugal, the sort of liberal elites in Porto and Lisbon understandably hate this. They like, why on earth have we ceded first place? Why are we sharing it with these upstarts in Brazil? Also, Portugal is in a massive mess after the Napoleonic Wars. Their harvests have failed. Their economy is in ruins. They're no longer really top dog in their own empire. They're very cross. And then spring of 1821, they sent Dom João an ultimatum. And they said, come back to Portugal or else, basically. And he said, oh, fine, very disconsolately. And before he left, he called in his 22-year-old son, Pedro. So this is the future Dom Pedro I. And he says to Pedro, I'd like you to stay in Rio. You're going to be my regent in Brazil. Now, he and Pedro don't get on at all. But this is the only time they ever have any connection. João says to Pedro, Pedro, if Brazil breaks away, it would be better that it is by your hand than by the hand of some adventurer. Oh, essentially, the king of Portugal and Brazil is basically telling his own son to lead a secessionist movement. Kind of, yeah. That's unexpected. You could say he's being farsighted. That's another first for Portugal. Yeah, he's being farsighted. He's basically saying, probably Brazil is going to try and break away. I would like it to stay in the family. If it looks like it's going to break away, you'd be on the right side. So, it would be a bit like the Prince Regent being the governor of New York or something and leading the revolution. George III being summoned back by angry mercantile elites in London and saying to the Prince Regent before he leaves, if the colonists refuse to pay their taxes, put yourself on their side and then it'll stay in the family. So, an alternative history in which the first leader of the United States is the Prince Regent. What could have been? I mean, he's got his own teeth, which is something you could say for him. Yes, that's true. So, now we have the very strange. There's a situation where Joao has gone back to Lisbon, but Pedro is the top dog in Rio. And Pedro is an interesting character. He's very intelligent. He's very well-read. He loves all the new liberal ideas. He's been reading Voltaire. He's been reading Edmund Burke. He's also, as is so often the way, spoiled, impulsive, erratic. But he's not hiding out in bed wearing a coat. No, he's not wearing his coat in bed. He's more proactive. He's a bit of a lecher, actually. He's a hit with the ladies. So, his coat would not come in handy. Because he's grown up and spent so much time in the army, spent so much of his life in Rio. He cares much more about Brazil than he does about Portugal. And the local politicians recognize this. And they say, well, if we work on this guy, we can use him as a figurehead to get independence. Who wants to be pushed around by a load of people who make ports and corks or whatever they're making back in Portugal? Who cares about them? We can pursue our own destiny. In December 1821, the Portuguese, who have kind of got wind of all this, they asked Pedro to come back to Lisbon as well. Because they thought, you know, him staying in Brazil is just encouraging separatism. And then the Brazilians presented him with a petition signed by 8,000 people. This is a very famous moment in Brazilian history, Tom. I'm sure you're all over it. This was a reception at the Royal Palace in Brazil in January 1822. He gets given this petition. He's very touched. And he says, as it is for the good of all and for the general happiness of the nation, I am ready. Tell the people I will stay. Hurrah, hurrah. Everyone in Rio is very pleased. They can see what's coming. So, eight months go by. And then on the 28th of August, August 1522. a ship arrives in rio from lisbon and the ship has a message the portuguese parliament which is called the cortes has ordered pedro to come home immediately and they've accused his ministers in brazil of treason so the breach has come the ministerial council in rio send a messenger off to find pedro pedro has gone off actually to visit sao paulo and he's on his way back so the messengers don't catch up with him until the morning of the 7th of september 1822 tom the most consequential date in brazilian history wow so they find pedro in a village outside sao paulo not in very glamorous circumstances he's riding this sort of ragged beaten down old horse he's wearing a very plain unadorned military uniform he's recently drunk some dirty water and is suffering intense diarrhea it's what two weeks since we had all that dysentery on glibly so yeah great to have dysentery back on the show it's very glibly he keeps him to get off his horse and relieve himself he cuts a terrible figure why i mean he's basically the ruler of brazil why isn't he looking a bit more glamorous why hasn't he got trumpets and glamorous uniforms and things and an escort why is he just wandering around like don quixote to be honest i think brazil is a little bit more wild west at this point okay than you're imagining i think it's hard to wear old braid and epaulettes when you are out in the the jungle yeah you're out in the badlands of sao paulo and you're crippled by intense stomach discomfort yes i suppose anyway a bloke comes up to him with the message the demand that he go back to lisbon pedro reads the message and he throws it on the ground and he stamps on it and his confessor is with him and pedro says to his confessor what should i do and the priest says if your majesty does not make himself king of brazil he will be taken prisoner by the cortesh and will probably be taken prisoner by the courtesans there is no other path except for independence and separation that's punchy stuff from the priest yeah and pedro to be fair to him even though he's in a bad way he responds excellently he says if this is what they want this is what they'll get the cortes are persecuting me they refer to me with contempt as a wretched boy and a brazilian well they will see what this wretched boy can do and then he tears from his hat the white and blue portuguese ribbon at this point white and blue are the colors of the portuguese monarchy and he tears from his hat the white and blue portuguese ribbon are the colors of the portuguese monarchy and he draws his sword and he shouts unimprovably the time has come independence or death that is so south american isn't it it's very south american and people may doubt this because they may say surely this didn't happen but actually there are three separate eyewitness accounts that say that it did yeah and it's exactly the kind of thing a romantically inclined young prince in south america which is exactly what he'd say even if suffering horrendous stomach cramps yes so he returns to rio a few days later and he's in very good spirit so he's recovered from his he's recovered he's recovered and he's already wearing new colors instead of the blue and white of the portuguese royal family he's now wearing green and yellow and the reason he's wearing green and yellow we'll talk about the flag a little bit in the second half when we talk more about anthems the green comes from uh his father's braganza dynasty green is their color and he is married to a hapsburg so the yellow is the house of austria so the yellow in the brazilian flag is hapsburg yeah wow the green and yellow in the brazilian flag are the colors of house of braganza and the house of hapsburg you get the sense with um maximilian yeah hapsburg uh last emperor of mexico the hapsburgs are not at their best in the new world no not in their best in the new world but clearly not no the whole of the new world should belong to the hapsburgs i think except for the northern bit which should be british all be british um so on the 20th of september the rio newspapers published the news that he has declared independence the headline says independence or death this is the cry that unites all brazilians brazil has awoken from her lethargy and has resolved with dignity to shake off the weight that has oppressed her and two days later he writes his father the most famous letter in brazilian history a very overwrought letter i as the prince regent of the kingdom of brazil and its perpetual defender declare null and void all the decrees and all else that has been imposed on brazil by these factious abhorrent machiavellian chaotic depraved and pernicious cortes he does an adjective that's the portuguese parliament he does they are no more than a gang of villainous anti-monarchists and murderers who are holding your majesty in the most ignominious captivity brazilian independence triumphs and will triumph or we will die defending it so quite prince harry to charles the third prince harry yeah i think that's a good one i think that's a good one i think yes gosh if he could get he could go to canada or something and declare yeah i mean canada is independent i suppose but he could cast off the british monarchy and set himself up as a rival canadian monarch i suppose i think he'd be quite suited to canada prince harry yeah no yeah the canadians are quite hardy people harry's fought in afghanistan the canadians wouldn't do all that business with elizabeth arden cream surely when they got frostbite they would no they would canadians are both they're kind of you know mounties they like kind of galloping around i'm just thinking about you suddenly i've just thought about justin trudeau and i think you might be right yeah exactly but also they're very very kind of woke and they're very woke not all of them though the prince harry fought in afghanistan ticks one box and the woke stuff ticks another pills to both yeah it was to both mark carney and poilievre or something a man who looks like a tory mp from a casting agency and all the truck drivers yes the truck the alberta people alberta alberta oil men i don't think alberta orman surely have any time no sorry i'm getting the model the alberta orman and mark carney right he took both anyway listen well it's great to have some canada on the show anyway well they are hosting the world cup so there so brazil has become independent and pedro becomes don pedro the first constitutional emperor and perpetual defender of brazil and the green and gold the new green and gold colors are flying everywhere there's loads of merch there's fans there's mugs there's clocks there's loads of stuff in these new colors so it's a very unusual revolution schwartz and starling in their books say it's a very unusual revolution it's both unique and banal liberal and conservative because on the one hand they've created a new country on the other hand basically they haven't there's absolutely no talk really of a republic or of a new dawn it's not like the american revolution or the french revolution it's a new imperial monarchy and there's no talk of abolitionism no hint of abolitionism no talk of a challenge to slavery in fact the people who are leading this revolution are people who often own lots of slaves their landowning elite what the brazilians want to do they look at what's going on with the spanish empire which has all completely fallen apart and feuding and you know chaos they want to avoid anything similar and that's why they go for an empire they think an empire is the best way to keep this vast sprawling territory of brazil intact and the emperor will function as a focal point and the emperor will allow us to transcend the regional divisions it's actually not a bad system i think it's quite smart so you've got an emperor you've got a flag yeah what about an anthem well this is the thing who would you get to write the anthem of your new country and the answer is you want somebody who's really invested in it somebody who's already shown himself to care a lot about independence and a man who will defy physical discomfort to do his bit for his country does don pedro write it don pedro himself writes the tune for the new anthem which is called the hymn of independence now it's possible and indeed likely that he had help from court musicians as far as i can tell there isn't a single brazilian historian who seriously doubts that he wrote it he did write it himself so he's the most musical empress it's nero yeah he didn't write the words though so the words were written by a poet and newspaper editor called everisto ferreira da vega y baros and it's incredibly long this first anthem how long is it it's not as long as the dutch it's about eight verses or 10 rather than 14 what's the standard of the lyrics poor i think really poor i think actually don pedro comes out better than everisto ferreira da vega y baros because some of i'll give you an example of the lyrics the august royal heir knowing the vile deceit in spite of the tyrants wish to stay in his brazil in spite of the tyrants in spite of the tyrants wish to stay in his brazil that's one verse pedro show your face your bold and virile soul we have in him the worthy chief of this empire of brazil we have in him the worthy chief we have in him the worthy chief of this empire of brazil it's not a banger it's not a banger but you can see the appeal of it to don pedro i guess if there's going to be an anthem in which he's being praised for his bold and virile soul exactly exactly for the next nine years this is the sound of brazilian freedom but bad news for fans of don pedro the first order is not well in his brazil because i said at the beginning how violent and unstable it is throughout the 1920s there are a series of revolts and there's a massive revolt in the the rebels there call for a separatist confederation of the equator which has to be put down by the army i mean this is so south american there's then a big blow to his prestige in 1825 he and his army lose control of their southernmost province which is the spanish-speaking province of cis platina and this becomes the independent country of uruguay set up with british protection because the british fancied having a friendly port on the river plate and they're not going to be able to take control of the river plate the first winner of the world cup of course exactly first win the world cup i'm actually a big fan of uruguay i like uruguay i know you are and then a year later 1826 there are two big developments in don pedro's private life First of all, his father, Dom João VI, dies in his palace outside Lisbon, back in Portugal. And it's not clear who's going to succeed him. Could Dom Pedro succeed him and become king of both kingdoms? Become emperor and king again? Will somebody else in the family succeed him? Or, Dom Pedro's preferred solution, his own daughter, so who's called Maria. Will she succeed his father? I'm on the edge of my seat. Then in December 1826, the other development, his Habsburg wife, Maria Leopoldina, dies in childbirth. He has been a very poor husband. He's had loads of affairs. He's been a massive predator. And because of this, rumors sweep Rio that she has died because he has beaten her and been brutal and neglectful and so on. So that's bad for him. And by the end of the decade, the mood in Rio has definitively turned against him. People say. He's a selfish brute. His wife died and it was his fault. And all he cares about is getting the Portuguese throne for his daughter, Maria. Because now there's a kind of civil war going on in Portugal. So on the night of the 11th of March, 1831, riots break out in the city of Rio. And this is an event known, as you will know, Tom, it's called the Night of Bottles. I mean, of course, I do know that. But I'll tell you what I've always. Why bottles? People are throwing bottles. Okay. Of course. It's pretty straightforward. Yeah. Right. So the Night of Bottles unusually lasts for five days. Do nights of bottles usually last just one day? I think a night usually lasts a night. No? You're right. Yeah. I think the clue is usually in the name. But not in this case. It's different in the Southern Hemisphere and in the New World. So magical realist. It is. So there are all these crowds fighting. Liberals are shouting, long live the Constitution, blah, blah, blah, throwing bottles. The city's Portuguese community, because the city has a Portuguese community. They're shouting for Dom Pedro. Weirdly, he was the bloke who abandoned Portugal, but they're very much now on his side. Dom Pedro, his cabinet say to him, okay, well, to shore up your regime, you need to crack down on the Portuguese expat community. They're absolute snakes that you've got to crack down on these people. Make an example of them. He says, no way. I mean, I'm a Portuguese expat myself. And he sacks all his ministers and appoints a load of cronies, loads of riots, loads of protests. He tries everything to calm the crowds. But basically, it's like, remember, we did the Iranian revolution. I do. It's like that, but sort of jollier and jauntier. So there are regular demonstrations and riots and stuff. And eventually, he thinks, well, if I don't do something decisive, there's going to be a cause for a republic. That is the last thing we want. So in the early hours of the 7th of April, 1831, Dom Pedro I, the first emperor of Brazil, announces that he will abdicate in favor of his son, who's only five years old and is, of course, also called Pedro. And will become Dom Pedro II, a friend of the show. Beard meteorite guy. Yeah. But who's only a little boy at this point. So Dom Pedro I says to one of his courtiers, here you have my act of abdication. I am returning to Europe and leaving a country that I loved very much and still love. Everything is over between me and Brazil forever. Sad. Very sad. He gets on a British warship. There's always British warships hanging around in this story. He goes back to Portugal. He fights this civil war. He gets the throne for his daughter in the end. And then precisely the point that he's just got the phone for his daughter. He drops dead of TB age 35. Well, that's quite convenient, isn't it? For his daughter, for his daughter. And that is the end of Dom Pedro the first, but this raises a huge question for Brazil and for this podcast. Yes. So the anthem, because it's the anthem was all about him. So what are they going to do now? Yes. What are they going to do now? Wow. Okay. Well, if you enjoy a national anthem themed cliffhanger, then I guess this is the cliffhanger to beat them all. Come back after the break to find out what the new anthem will be. This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's. Now, when you have ambitions, being able to see the bigger picture is just so important. And history definitely teaches us that. My favorite example, not necessarily a brilliant man, but the Spanish. The Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortes, he was a visionary, he was an adventurer, but he also grasped that the empire of the Aztecs was vulnerable and he took his men in land and he was able to bring down the Aztecs with just a handful of men. And of course, this isn't just a problem for blood-soaked conquistadors. It is true for the rest of us as well, which is where Lloyd's comes in their app helps you to see all your finances in one place so that you can feel clearer and more confident. And rather like Cortes, you're managing the micro and the macro. 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ZipRecruiter's newest feature and powerful matching technology shows the most interested, qualified people first. So find candidates who really want those jobs in your company on ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash history. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash history. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our Brazilian-themed Rest is History today. And the year is 1831. And you join us in a Brazil that is in the midst of political turmoil, but also, musical turmoil, because they have kicked out top tunester Pedro I. So what are they now going to do about this anthem that he's left them, which is basically him have praised his virility and strength and wisdom and stuff. Yeah, they can't use it. Because he's proved himself to be useless, hasn't he? And the thing is, they can't use new words for the anthem because he wrote the tune. And it would be insane to have a tune written by the bloke you've just kicked out. Well, unless it's really good. Well, it's not that good, I don't think. It's not that good. I think it's just generic, early 19th century sort of jolly music. But there's good news. A local composer is already on the case. This is one of my favorite Brazilian composers of the 1820s, Francisco Manuel da Silva. Now, Francisco Manuel da Silva actually knew Dom Pedro I because he had played in the chapel orchestra at the Imperial Palace. But clearly, he wasn't a fan of the emperor, because as soon as the news of the abdication broke, Silva had started writing a celebratory hymn. And it took him a long time to write. It took him six weeks to do it. He premiered it at the Sao Pedro Theater, St. Peter Theater. And then he performed it again at a special gala, along with a drama entitled The Fall of the Tyrant. Okay, that's ungrateful. Very ungrateful. Anyway, he probably never envisaged this as a national anthem. The title is not really very snappy. The title is To the Great and Heroic Day of the 7th of April, 1831, a hymn offered to the Brazilian people by a fellow countryman. I mean, the problem with that is it's going to date fast, isn't it? It is going to date fast, yeah, because who's going to care about it? It's not clear at this point whether it has any lyrics or whether it's just instrumental. The lyrics aren't published publicly until two years later, so we don't know really whether they were sung at the first performance or whether they're actually written in the next two years. They were written by a liberal judge who was called Ovidio Sarraiva de Carvalho e Silva. And the general consensus among historians is that Ovidio Sarraiva's lyrics for this anthem are absolutely terrible. Oh, why? They just babble, they're really overwrought, and the only thing that distinguishes them is their ferocious hostility to the Portuguese, which is not something you often get in song lyrics. I don't know many lucrophobic songs. So to give you a sample of these lyrics, The cannons of tyranny no longer roar in Brazil, The monsters that enslaved it no longer thrive among us. Barbarians of Jewish and Moorish blood be gone our homeland is no longer your treasure house it's hard to imagine in the 21st century people singing the lyrics uh barbarians of jewish and moorish blood i mean it's obviously a reference to the sort of i guess the reconquista and and um portugal's kind of history of religious diversity spain famously expelled both the moors and the jews so maybe it's a reference to the fact that portugal was distinct from that maybe maybe anyway even at the time in the 1830s a lot of people say god these are poor lyrics and they drop them quite quickly but they like the tune silver's tune they would play it at public ceremonies without any words so the years go by under don pedro ii the second emperor brazil is very chaotic there is massive tension between rio and the provinces there are endless revolts and rebellions there's another one on pernambuco there's a slave revolt in bayern in 1835 there's an unbelievably bloody rebellion in the northern state of para in the late 1830s in which a third of the population were killed about 30 000 people and amazing never heard of it no exactly and so in 1841 the political elite decided that the only way to try to impose a bit of stability and get a bit of legitimacy for the central government was to bring forward the coronation of the 14 year old boy emperor friend of the show don pedro ii because why i think they just think we want to show you know that the state is functioning yeah yeah the state is functioning a bit of braid people love a bit of braid yeah by this point this anthem by uh francisco manuel de silva the one that he had written when don pedro was kicked out this is accepted as the sort of de facto national anthem so they commission new lyrics for it the new lyrics are just as bad as the previous lyrics no why are they being horrible about the portuguese again no they're not they're just bland and they're just rubbishy here we go when you come auspicious day may happiness dawn among us we see in pedro ii the adventure of brazil that's mad that's gonna date even faster i mean what if what happens if he dies well they decide he's rubbish and send drive him into exactly at this point the authorities basically say okay just keep humming yeah just keep humming so keep playing this hymn by francisco manuel de silva whenever the monarch goes to public events whenever this military ceremony is but no lyrics so for the next 40 years brazil has a tune but it doesn't have any words can i just ask this tune is the tune that they still have to this day is it yes it is when you see brazil the brazilian team line up the music that you hear is the one that they're all humming at this point and remember think about the lyrics they could have had that's the that's the question they brought back a medley of the old lyrics anyway so for the next 40 years they have a tune but no words you know these are turbulent and interesting 40 years for brazil this is the 40 years when they basically invent brazilian identity so they have this idea of a unique tropical culture distinct from europe distinct from portugal brazil actually manages to win a war one of the bloodiest wars that people have never heard of the war of the triple alliance against paraguay um there was a guy called lawrence blair who came on last year to do a bonus episode about this it's a mad war so you listen to that about a million people died in this war insane there are constant slave revolts they do end up abolishing slavery in 1888 but presumably it remains kind of deeply racist massively embedded even to this day even to this day it's hugely embedded now during all this time don pedro ii as we described in our previous world cup episode on brazil in 2022 has been a pretty good emperor he's very widely admired and respected abroad he loves art he loves science he founds opera houses and things he's quite a nice guy isn't he he's called the louis the 14th of the tropics but that's not necessarily a good thing a compliment yeah i mean louis the 14th isn't a very nice man no he's a much nicer guy than he's a nice guy he goes around writing letters fan letters to like richard wagner and louis pastor and victor hugo and stuff the one thing he doesn't have is words for his anthem he doesn't have that there is one attempt during his reign to do something with the anthem and this is courtesy of a very unexpected character an american composer called louis moreau gotchalk and gotchalk he came from new orleans his father was a jewish immigrant from london and his mother was a creole from the future dominican republic santa domingo and gotchalk was a child prodigy he used to play the piano in hotels in new orleans he was so talented that when he was 13 his father took him to paris and the paris conservatoire refused to even hear him play when they found out he was american the head of the piano faculty at the paris conservatoire said and i quote there is no point america is a country of steam engines so so they didn't even hear him play anyway what happened to gotchalk he traveled the americas giving piano recitals he was thrown out of the united was actually drummed out of the united states in 1865 after having been accused of having an affair with a student piano student in oakland california he claimed that he had been framed by a rival of the piano manufacturer chickering and sons which was the brand of piano that he used in his tours and what's the thought on that i didn't i mean who can tell who can say i don't know i don't even know what the rival was called the references to this story is so opaque i don't know who chickering and sons great rivals were i don't know i don't know how deeply they were embedded in the social life of oakland california well quite i have to just on this subject skate over ignorance yeah total ignorance in the summer of 1869 gotchalk arrived in rio and he was greeted as a celebrity piano prodigies didn't often come to rio and don pedro the second thought he was brilliant and was all over him and gotchalk decided to write two different works inspired by the brazilian anthem so he wrote a march that was dedicated to pedro the second and a piano work called the grand triumphal fantasy on the brazilian national anthem which was dedicated to pedro's daughter isabel and the grand triumphal fantasy was a massive hit at the time and remains current in brazil to this day there was a big sort of hoo-ha in the late 20th century about reinterpretations of the national anthem because the military dictatorship of the 60s and 70s tried to stamp them out and the grand triumphal fantasies bizarre as it sounds became very popular on the left of brazilian politics and was used by the democratic labor party in its tv ads in the 1980s so this guy gotchalk the guy who possibly disgraced himself in oakland or being framed by a piano manufacturer i like to think the second i like the sound of him anyway so that's what happened to his grand triumphal fantasy you can look it up on youtube and listen to it if that's the way you like to spend your time gotchalk himself came to a very sad end after he'd finished it on the 24th of february 1869 he was playing the piano at a concert in a teatro lyrico fluminense in rio he had just finished his own piece which was unbelievably called morte death when he collapsed i can't believe you're laughing about this chortling away it turned out he had yellow fever oh that's even funnier and a month later he died in his hotel but here's the weird thing he didn't die of the yellow fever he died of an overdose of quinine which he'd presumably taken to combat the yellow fever hilarity ensues so that's a strange story anyway back to pedro ii if you heard our previous podcast about him you will recall that in the late 1880s public opinion turned against him they accused him of being a banana didn't they remember that yeah they used to call him pedro banana and the other guy who was the uh the pear yeah louis philippe some sort of great fruit salad bug the whole series writes itself it does okay so people turn against him why the rich coffee planters were furious about the um abolition of slavery liberal intellectuals had swung towards republicanism they thought that he was old and boring and you know an unsuitable figurehead for brazil and the army had turned against him they were obsessed with ideas about progress and modernization and they thought he and his court were backward and all this so they basically kicked him out in november 1888 and they replaced him with this another old man actually a marshal with a massive beard called marshal deodora de fonseca well what's the point in kicking out an old bloke he's got a big beard and then getting another one mad insane exactly especially as don pedro ii was basically the best leader brazil's ever had yeah don pedro ii didn't have the will to fight he went off into paris he died in paris you may remember he had a massive state funeral with basically hundreds of thousands of people turned out yeah because they all loved him exactly so brazil is now a republic dominated by the big coffee oligarchs and the army big coffee big coffee big coffee is genuinely running brazil at this point they they rip don pedro's uh name off all the streets and on the buildings it's the classic story they changed the image on the banknotes so like um philip ii then the dutch revolt exactly in a dutch national anthem podcast they also tweak the flag they do all sorts of things but they keep their hapsburg stuff well as we shall see they do there's still the yellow right what color do brazil play in they play they wear yellow shirts they do need a new anthem well they need new lyrics right because the tune remains well they decide at this point they'd like a new tune as well okay so they have a public contest for a new anthem they have chosen the words already they want the anthem to fit the words they've got they've chosen a poem by a liberal writer called and they've all got massive names this writer is called jose joaquim the campos the costa the madero she albuquerque and he's written the poem please tell me this is good it's not great actually i mean you tell me i think it's probably better than the previous ones i'll read it to you you can tell what you think may this rebel song be an unfurled mantle of light under the vastness of these skies this rebel song that comes to redeem our past from inglorious deeds liberty liberty above us spread thy wings through the struggles in the storm grant that we hear thy voice it's better than the previous ones it's better than the previous ones a little gassy yeah gassy exactly exactly so these are the lyrics 29 people enter the competition to write the tune they have multiple rounds to the eurovision song contest style there is an ominous sign before the second round a journalist asks this new president marshall deodoro with his massive beard what do you think of the entrance so far and deodoro said i prefer the old anthem oh okay so they have the final at the teatro lyrico fluminense the place where gotchalk the pianist had died with his yellow fever they have the final at this theater they pay the finalists they pay them all twice marshall deodoro and his ministers are listening in the royal box deodoro leaves the royal box to consult it's like that moment in the eurovision when you're waiting for the results to come in then he comes back into the box with his ministers they retake their seats the interior minister stands and he reads the result and he says after all that we'll stick with the old anthem after all good so they've stuck with the old anthem but they haven't got any lyrics for it still marshall deodoro falls from power after a year falling out with congress is this because they're crossed with him for not choosing and you know i don't think the anthem plays a massive part in that actually frankly it'd be nice to claim and it would make the episode better yeah it wouldn't be true the national anthem revolt and marshall deodoro's fall just a year after they've kicked out don pedro ii sets the tone for what follows so to quote the brazilian writer pedro vasquez in the next century brazil had 12 states of emergency 19 military revolutions two presidential resignations three presidents prevented from assuming office four presidents deposed seven different constitutions four dictatorships and nine authoritarian governments which is a lot the consequence of that is that it's very difficult to arrive at a consensus for new lyrics for the national precisely precisely precisely priority no because basically there'll be a coup in another year yeah and they'll want their own lyrics so there's no lyrics now the problem for the government is people have started to make up their own lyrics there are complaints flooding in all the time a people are singing will sing the anthem in school teachers will get their children their pupils to sing the anthem but the teachers will make up their own lyrics and some regional governments have decided to start imposing their own lyrics which are generally about their own state so there'll be a supposedly a national anthem but it turns out that the lyrics are all like oh this state is absolutely brilliant and the best of all states and the others are useless or whatever well unless you're bertelbrecht yes i guess so yeah we're no better than anybody else hopefully in the future people won't recoil from us in horror anymore yeah um in 1909 they held yet another contest to write lyrics for the old anthem and this is won by a man called rio duque estrada he is the man who wrote the lyrics that exist today what's he like this man who sets his stamp on brazilian musical history it's hard to find out anything very interesting about him he's a sort of generic early 20th century latin american intellectual with a sort of curled mustache and a very stiff collar he shares all the sort of idealistic enthusiasms of the early 20th century so progress modernity and so on by winning this competition he has landed himself in a world of pain because for the next decade his lyrics are constantly being debated in congress and in the press and he has to rewrite them nine times so he must be heartily sick of having won this competition and this drags on and on and on but by the early 1920s the centenary of brazilian independence now you will recall tom the most important date in brazilian history is the 7th of september 1822 when don pedro ii declared independence well the centenary in 1922 is fast approaching and rio is going to host a world expo to celebrate they do i have so many world expos at this time don't they they do then people love a world expo they've got 14 countries coming a very strange lineup actually so the people you'd expect to go like the us britain france are going portugal are going also just a little random european countries a czech slovakia denmark norway but not many south american countries is that because they're jealous i think they just don't care yeah right i don't know maybe they are jealous they've built some absolutely thrilling attractions so there is the main thing is a series of pavilions there's the statistics pavilion oh brilliant there's the agriculture and roads pavilion there is the large industries pavilion there is the small industries pavilion many small people aren't going well callum very foolishly i think has said it sounds rather like the rest of history festival hampton corp yeah people who come into that are going to love our statistics tent but three million people go to this expo in rio so that's even more than going to the rest of history festival hampton corp palace the opening of the small industries and statistics pavilions is fast approaching they need an anthem they need the lyrics so eventually the federal government do a deal with this bloke osorio duque estrada they say okay we're just going to buy finish stop now stop changing the lyrics we're going to buy them off you they buy them off him for five million reich which is which is apparently i just i learn from some enthusiastic googling was half the price of a new car in rio at the time oh so not very it's not enormous amount no i mean you have to write another anthem if you get once the rest of the car yeah to get the rest of the car the very first radio broadcast in brazilian the playing of this new anthem of the west the old anthem with the new lyrics on the morning of the seventh of september it was broadcast from corcovado which is this mountain above rio the mountain where the statue of christ the redeemer stands today and actually christ the redeemer they began work on it this year so the first foundations had been laid while the sound of the anthem is drifting across the city so it's a great year for brazilian identity national identity it is it's a brilliant year for brazilian national identity it is a brilliant year for brazilian identity now we come to the lyrics i will read these and you can tell me whether you think they're better than previous lyrics okay so these are the lyrics you have today oh beloved idolized homeland hail hail adored land amongst a thousand others art thou brazil oh beloved homeland of the sons of this ground thou art a kind mother beloved homeland brazil i mean they're like every other anthem they're not great are they no so i mean there are loads and loads and loads of national anthems like that so if we haven't done a national anthem it's basic because they're all like that they're slow generic and so flowery and meaningless i think i just don't think they're great however if you look up the text there are three specific references which it might be interesting to unpick just quickly so that was actually the chorus that i read there that was the chorus the opening lines of the first verse are the placid shores of the the resounding shout of a heroic people and the sun of liberty and shining beams shone in the sky at that instant so the iparanga is the stream outside sao paulo where don pedro with diarrhea got the message and he shouted liberty or death and drew his sword in 1822 so it's kind of nice that don pedro is still getting a little nod a little nod exactly exactly the next reference brazil an intense dream a vivid ray of love and hope to earth descendeth if in thy beautiful smiling and limpid sky the image of the cross blazeth now you might think the cross this is um christian cross it's not really it's the southern cross the word in portuguese is cruzeiro and this is this constellation that's only visible in the southern hemisphere it was first described by a portuguese astronomer jao faras who had gone on the first voyage to brazil in 1500 he set up an astrolabe on the beach to work out where they were using you know the stars and stuff and he wrote a letter to king manuel of portugal describing the southern cross and including a rough sketch of it the first sketch ever done so the southern cross became a great symbol of brazil as it is a symbol of australia and new zealand the new coat of arms of republican brazil when don pedro ii was kicked out actually includes the southern cross so the southern cross matters great the cruzeiro matters a great deal to brazil they had four different currencies in the 20th century called cruzeiros and there is fittingly as we're a world cup series there is a football team called cruzeiro founded in 1921 in bello horizonte and this is a team that produced two of the players from the 1970 world cup winning team tostau and piazza and jesinho who scored in every round of the 1970 world cup he played for cruzeiro later on and renato Ronaldo, the original Ronaldo, if you remember him, Tom, with his gappy teeth. kind of bald yes he played for cruzeiro before he moved to psv i don't know a little bit like zach polanski uh yeah i can see the resemblance the teeth the teeth yeah yeah better at football than zach polanski yeah much better who doesn't strike me as a natural sportsman he doesn't exude athletic prowess does that polanski so near the end of the anthem there's one of the reference brazil of eternal love may the starry ensign which thou displayest be a symbol and the starry ensign is the brazilian flag and actually we've made a few references to the brazilian flag brazil's flag is surely one of the most distinctive in the world yeah for sure and i hadn't realized it was a hapsburg tribute flag yeah so basically although it's changed multiple times it is a tweaked version of the original flag adopted by don pedro in 1822 so if brazil beat the netherlands philip ii will have the last laugh as a hapsburg yeah yeah he would so the green the house as i said the house of braganza which ruled portugal since 1422 the yellow diamond hapsburg that's don pedro's wife maria leopoldina then there's a blue circle in the middle now originally in the blue circle there was an astrolabe hence the thing you use to look at the stars and um the astrolabe is also in the middle of the portuguese flag but when they kicked out the portuguese they replaced it with the stars including the southern and their stars represent the 27 different states of brazil and finally there is a motto so brazil's flag is very unusual having a motto written on it and the motto is and this means order and progress and this is a quotation from a french writer auguste love as a principle order as a basis progress as your goal order and progress it's the sort of motto the positivist movement and in latin america people were obsessed with positivism in the late 19th century so this is a sort of anti-clerical scientific progress strong central government embrace modernity all of this august count was the great sort of progenitor of this people loved him in brazil and they put his order and progress on the flag unfortunately order and progress were not really the guiding principles of brazilian life in the 20th century and actually this wednesday tom we have a bonus episode with paul rouse historian of sport as well as of ireland who is going to be talking about how the brazilian military dictatorship uh which ruled from 1964 to 1985 used football and in particular the world cup winning team of pele and co in 1970 how they used football to launder their image so a very interesting story anyway the anthem itself never has a fixed political meaning and that's been true for so many anthems that we've talked about so you know how um we were talking before in previous episodes about how people would basically co-opt or appropriate anthems yeah and and turn them for political purposes well this has been the case with the brazilian anthem too so in the 1990s when poor rural workers were demonstrating and occupying farms and calling for land reform they would sing the national anthem and one of them said later when she was interviewed she said it was the best way to stop the police from attacking us they had no way of shooting at unarmed people who were singing the brazilian national anthem but also of course very popular on the right so when jay bolsonaro the i have to say very unlovely uh president of brazil sort of big chum of trump's yeah trump adjacent president of brazil when he lost his bid for re-election 2022 and his supporters went berserk to the sort of maga style uprising and a lot of them were filmed singing the national anthem while doing nazi salutes oh dear which i think is not not very admirable but the most celebrated use of the anthem comes from the 1980s so i mentioned the military dictatorship in the mid-1980s the military dictatorship was losing its grip on brazilian society and it was under huge pressure from a movement called direct elections already which was demanding free presidential elections and they organized these huge rallies with hundreds of people and they organized these huge rallies with hundreds of thousands of people and the rallies had lots of kind of cultural and um sporting figures associated with the most famously socrates the captain of brazil in 1982 who paid for a team called corinthians and sao paulo and he got all of his teammates to wear political messages on their shirts so the only mention we get of socrates that's the only mention you're getting of socrates yeah oh i was hoping for a little bit i teased you with it but i mean we can talk about socrates privately if you're desperate to if you want an analysis of like how he worked with adair falcao and serrazo in the midfield of 1982 tom i am the person to talk you through that and his relationship with plato yeah exactly how does this relate to the anthem this movement that socrates is a part of one of the most celebrated figures in this movement was a singer called fafada baleng who was then in her late 20s and she was seen as a great sex symbol in the 1980s the voice of the masses so she has this very low husky voice a little bit like the sound that you associate with portuguese fado music oh yeah so this kind of husky kind of lament yeah and she would go to these rallies for father boleyn and she would give this performance of the national anthem the regime had banned anything but very very formal interpretations of the anthem they said you have to follow the 1920s orchestration if you do anything else with it you are disrespecting the anthem and disrespecting brazil so you can't do it in a different way so this is a little bit like remember the the star spangled banner and we were talking about jimmy hendrix and whatnot yeah this is carrying that to another degree this is basically saying you're breaking the law if you do anything other than do it in this very rigid formal way and she would go to these rallies with hundreds of thousands of people and she would give very very dramatic reinterpretations of the anthem but playing within the rules no breaking the rules breaking the rules incredibly slow mournful melodramatic and people would be crying during the anthem like thousands of people would be crying while she was singing it and it became the emblematic sound of protest in the 80s and if people want a sense of what i mean if you go onto her youtube channel you can find a clip of her performing it in that style in the senate in brasilia in 2013 because for the 25th anniversary of the new democratic constitution that had been introduced in 1988 when the dictatorship finally fell to celebrate the anniversary they invited her into the senate to give her performance to give her rendition and she did it there to celebrate the fact that democracy had been reintroduced and the protesters had ultimately won and so tom we end with that very rare thing on the rest is history a relatively happy ending well that's wonderful uh and actually in the manner of speaking we're going to have the same in our next episode the final episode which is going to be about the national anthem of south africa and in that as well as football there will be quite a lot of rugby rugby excellent all right and so obviously if you're a massive fan of rugby or indeed if you're a fan of nelson mandela you may want to listen to that immediately and if you're not already a member of the rest of history club you can get that by joining us at therestishistory.com thank you dominic thank you everyone for listening and uh let's say goodbye with the national anthem of brazil bye-bye bye-bye oh is you is is is is is is is Thank you. You can go to the palace. You can feast like Henry VIII on the very lawns where he walked. In the sunshine, I'll be talking to Tracy Borman about the Tudors. I'll be talking to Katja Hoyer about Weimar Germany. I'll be talking to Ian Hislop about the history of Saturn. so it's on two days it's on saturday the 4th of july and sunday the 5th of july the bad news is we have actually sold out the allocations that we were given by hampton court for both days the good news however we have persuaded hampton court to let us have more people so there will be a handful of extra tickets available for both the saturday and the sunday now we do expect all of those extra tickets to sell out really quickly so please do not wait to get your hands on them the tickets are exclusive for club members it's one of the benefits of being a member of the rest is history club frankly if you're not a member and you would like to go to the festival the only way to do that is by joining the club so you have to head to the restishistory.com to sign up and then you go to the members area once you've signed up and you select festival to get your tickets we are really hoping to see as many of you there as possible in the sunshine at hampton court bye-bye for adults with crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms every choice matters trim fire offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start trim fire is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks if your doctor decides that you can self-inject trim fire proper training is required trim fire is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur before treatment get checked for infections and tuberculosis tell your doctor if you have an infection flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine explore what's possible ask your doctor about trim fire today call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit our website at www.trimfire.com for a limited time you can get a big mac meal for just eight dollars that's a burger fries and a drink they don't call it an extra value meal for nothing get a big mac meal only at mcdonald's price and participation may vary promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing