This is the second English-language monograph published on the 1910 Revolta da Chibata or Revolt of the Lash, an uprising in which mostly Afro-Brazilian sailors seized a half-dozen Brazilian navy vessels (including the two most powerful British-built battleships) stationed in Rio de Janeiro's waters. They rebelled against the use of the lash (chibata), given that whipping was inflicted on the bodies of navy sailors during the post-abolition era. Note that slavery had ended 22 years earlier.
The first two chapters of this work examine the navy from Brazilian independence in 1822 to the 1910 revolt to seek its long-term causes. This part focuses on corporal punishment and forced enrollment in the navy, as well as the relations of this institution with Brazilian politics. The book also argues that the short-term origins of the rebellion can be found partially in the Afro-Brazilian sailors' experiences in the Armstrong shipyards in Newcastle, where these modern battleships were built. The last two chapters, which should have been the core of the book, deal with the revolt and its aftermath.
The author connects the Revolt of the Lash with the larger history of Atlantic slavery and the African diaspora. It belongs to a transitional time for the entire Americas. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, conceptions of class, race, and gender changed as an effect of material and technological transformations. These transformations were also linked to the larger conservative and reactionary movements against the early to mid nineteenth-century cycle of revolution and emancipation, as is evident in the US post-Reconstruction era as well as in the governments ruling most of Latin America between 1880 and 1910. This clash between the modern state apparatus and the still politically engaged lower classes created some of the first state-sponsored anti-black massacres of the twentieth century, among them the 1912 bloodbath undergone by the Partido Independiente de Color (PIC), Cuba's mainly black political party.
Even though the book seeks to connect this revolt with the larger history of the black Atlantic, it lacks engagement with what would have been, for the rebels, the recent history of the slave trade to Brazil. In their studies of the slave trade, Brazilian scholars Manolo Florentino and Jaime Rodrigues point out the pervasive presence of black sailors on the Rio-based slave vessels. Morgan's book misinterprets some of the workings of this traffic. For instance, the author states that, “[w]ith the end of the Atlantic Slave Trade to Brazil in 1850, money that for centuries had flowed out of the country to secure African labor instead began to flow into various area of the domestic economy” (16). Actually, money flowed into Rio de Janeiro because of this traffic, as the merchants of Rio had the upper hand in the slave trade from Angola. They were also the middlemen in the selling of captives to other Brazilian regions such as Minas Gerais. The slave trade enriched carioca merchants, as they paid for slaves in Africa with products marketable in Luanda rather than money, from Brazilian-produced alcoholic beverages and tobacco to Indian textiles, among other goods. Also missing is the contribution of the slave trade in buying ships from the United States and building local ships for the Brazilian merchant fleet, which needed sailors no matter their color.
A closer look at events linking Brazil with other Latin American countries may have prevented substantial mistakes. For instance, the events the author identifies as the “War with Argentina” and the “Cisplatine War” are the same, but they are mentioned with different dates in the book (32, 35). The explanations provided for this conflict and the Triple Alliance War (35–36, 69) are plagued with errors, for example, the identification of the Argentinean president during the latter conflict as Bartolomé Mitre instead of Justo J. Urquiza (whose name is misspelled). The description of the Triple Alliance War, fought by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay against Paraguay, repeats Brazilian nationalist myths, for example by stating that only Brazilian troops entered Paraguay (36). Intriguingly, the book makes no mention of the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), the only nineteenth-century Latin American conflict in which navies played a central role.
Morgan argues that the Revolt of the Lash is little known or largely misunderstood. Although some little-known (even for Brazil) local military historians have misrepresented these events, the revolt is acknowledged by the large historiography on race relations in Brazil (produced in Brazil and the United States). However, a nuanced social history and network analysis of the sailors involved in the revolt is still needed, to examine who they were before they rebelled and what they became during and after these events. In addition, further research is needed about the factional politics within the army and the navy that surrounded the revolt, by conducting sociopolitical analysis from both top down and bottom up.
