Slavery and War in the Americas

Published as part of a book series on the American Civil War (1861–1865), Vitor Izecksohn's study is the result of his early concern with finding ways to contest the American exceptionalism interpretive model. Izecksohn, a professor at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, takes on this task by comparing slave recruitment by the Union army in the latter conflict and by the army of Brazil, his own country, during the Paraguayan War (or the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–1870). The purpose of his study is “to understand how recruitment transformed society and government during the Civil War in the United States and the War of the Triple Alliance in Brazil” (p. 24). Thus, this book is not a comprehensive comparison of those two conflicts—the first a civil war, the second an international war involving three other countries with social and political conditions different from Brazil's. This aspect should be emphasized.This is a book intended for a public primarily interested in US history and the American Civil War rather than Latin American history. To inform his readers about the Paraguayan War, a conflict this audience is likely unfamiliar with, the author provides a succinct account of its causes in the first chapter. He devotes two chapters each to discussing slave recruitment for the Union army and Brazil's recruitment of slaves and free blacks for the Paraguayan campaign. In these four chapters he highlights in particular those social and political similitudes between the Northern states and Brazil that would affect in similar ways their respective war efforts in the 1860s. He also points out the differences that, in the end, would lead to slave emancipation in the United States and only a return to the prewar status quo in the slavocratic Brazilian Empire.Chapters 2 and 4 discuss Union army recruitment. They are based on secondary sources and basically consist of a summary of the current knowledge on the subject. Izecksohn observes that both the Union and Brazil aimed for a decisive victory over their opponents in a short time and that both failed to attain this objective. In both countries, this failure led central governments to assume recruitment responsibilities, to the detriment of the long-established practice of state recruitment. In these chapters, Izecksohn describes how the 1863 Enrollment Act brought about a massive enlistment of free blacks and eventually a decisive turn in the nature of the war. In his words, “a war between armies would turn into a war of societies, involving the destruction of Southern slavery” (p. 45). Basing his argument on recent scholarship on the American Civil War, the author claims that enlistment in the Union army was a decisive step for improving the social status of black Americans. He also argues that the Union army's massive military recruitment of runaway slaves from the South prevented a return to the antebellum status quo.Unlike these chapters, those addressing enlistment of slaves in Brazil (chapters 3 and 5) are based on thorough primary source research. The chapters on Brazil constitute Izecksohn's original contribution to the comparative approach that he proposes. They also comprise the genuine contribution of this book to Latin American history. Here Izecksohn shows that while blacks, mulattoes, and poor whites in Brazil served together, military service never became a means of social promotion for black soldiers. Even though slaves who were donated to the state during the early stages of the Paraguayan campaign escaped exploitation, this was not the norm. Needing soldiers at the front, the emperor eventually manumitted slaves of the state and those belonging to religious orders. But the majority of slaves remained on the plantations. Compared to the impact of the American Civil War on slavery, Brazil's participation in the Paraguayan War brought little change for the country's slaves.Izecksohn's comparative approach does show that the American Civil War was no exceptional experience. Yet though the book notes the similarities between slave recruitment in the Union and the Brazilian Empire, it fails to shed sufficient light on what these similarities explain or reveal about each country's experience. It would have been opportune to have done so

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  João B Biehl, João Biehl•Current Anthropology•2022

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