NEITHER PEDDLERS NOR WAR: unraveling 180 years of historical literature on Pernambuco’s “Peddlers’ War,” 1710-1711

Abstract

This historiographical “tour” essay examines the many meanings that have been ascribed to Pernambuco’s “Peddlers’ War” (1710-1711) in nearly 200 years of historical literature. Looking across generations and intellectual paradigms (Marxist, liberal, Brazilian nationalist, and Pernambucan regionalist), it shows that 1710-1711 has stood for a nativist and perhaps a republican movement against the Portuguese, a fracturing between the mercantile bourgeoisie and planter class, or as a symbol of Pernambuco’s historic rebelliousness in the wake of oppression by outsiders. Focusing primarily on Pernambucan debates, it also examines the seasoned, if brief, reflections on the event by colonial historians beyond Brazil—including an unpublished 1957 US dissertation—that suggests how much the discussion of the events of 1710-1711 has to tell us about shifting currents of intellectual and political life in Pernambuco.