Banca de DEFESA: ADAUTO SANTOS DA ROCHA

Uma banca de DEFESA de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : ADAUTO SANTOS DA ROCHA
DATE: 14/02/2025
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: videoconferência
TITLE:

"Your Majesty's Warriors"? Indigenous conscriptions and militarization in the Province of Alagoas for the Paraguayan War (1864-1870)

KEY WORDS:

Province of Alagoas. Indigenous recruitments. Paraguayan War. Protagonisms. Resistance. Negotiations.

 

PAGES: 442
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: História
SUMMARY:

In this thesis, the multiple forms of indigenous military engagement in the Province of Alagoas during the Paraguayan War, which took place between 1864 and 1870, are discussed. To this end, in addition to understanding the historical arrangement of what was recognized as the largest armed conflict in South America, it was essential to revisit important themes for indigenous history at the provincial level. Far from a reductionist view and widely disseminated by classical historiography, where indigenous populations used to be viewed in a static and passive way, here they were understood as important for the social game established during the war. Thus, we carried out a historiographical reasoning about the indigenous presence in nineteenth-century Alagoas. We historicized the processes of formation of the settlements. Next, we problematize the structuring of the General Directorate of Indians in 1849 and the interference of specific legislation on the lands of the settlements until the official extinction, decreed in 1872. We discuss the strategies used by various authorities and recruitment agents to lead indigenous people, national guards, freed blacks and other social actors to the battlefields. Subsequently, we focused our analysis on the recruitments that occurred, specifically, in the Leopoldina Military Colony and adjacent areas. Located in the provincial north, in a border region between the Military Colony of Pimenteiras and the Village of Riacho do Mato, Leopoldina functioned as a kind of microcosm for us to analyze the interactions between indigenous objects of recruitment, plantation owners and police authorities. Furthermore, throughout the war, the indigenous lands located in the Leopoldina region were the target of repeated invasions by landowners under the Land Law of 1850. Finally, we demonstrate how, throughout the context of war, indigenous people constituted solid forms of resistance against conscription. Faced with the abnormality established by the conflict, indigenous people and other social agents hid from recruiting patrols, deserted the military lines, demanded freedom through formal instruments, formed solidarity networks, destroyed precarious prison facilities and, faced with the impossibility of circumventing militarization, took advantage of it by negotiating with recruiters. In various circumstances, in addition to marching to meet provincial and imperial demands for "volunteers of the homeland", they also marched in defense of private interests. The research is based on a solid and numerous body of documents, formed by demographic, cartographic and manuscript sources, consulted mainly in the Public Archive of Alagoas (APA), the Historical and Geographical Institute of Alagoas (IHGAL), the Jordão Emerenciano State Public Archive (APEJE), the Research Group on Indigenous History of Alagoas (GPHIAL), the National Archives of Rio de Janeiro (AN),  at the Brazilian Historical and Geographic Institute (IHGB), as well as at the Army Historical Archive (AHEx). Throughout the text and the documentary analysis, we sought to consider the points of view of the indigenous people and their social protagonism. To this end, we methodologically based ourselves on the assumptions of the so-called "New Indigenous History", which values indigenous peoples as protagonists and decisive agents in the historical events that unfolded in the provincial Alagoas. In this sense, this study intends to contribute to a new look at indigenous military engagement in nineteenth-century Brazil.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Externa à Instituição - MARIANA ALBUQUERQUE DANTAS - UFRPE
Externo à Instituição - EDSON HELY SILVA - UFPE
Externo à Instituição - FRANCISCO EDUARDO TORRES CANCELA - UFSB
Externo à Instituição - FRANCISCO MONTEOLIVA DORATIOTO - UnB
Presidente - ***.450.301-** - VANIA MARIA LOSADA MOREIRA - UFRRJ