The construction of representative democracy and the rule of law is not a linear process, neither in Brazil nor in France. Over the past two hundred years, both countries have undergone authoritarian experiences, several constitutional and political regime changes, most often violent ones, and moments of intense polarization. France stands out for its political instability. In the nineteenth century, it was the country of revolutions: that of 1789, whose memory remains alive among republicans the world over, but also those of 1830 and 1848. In 1851, the Second Republic succumbed to the coup d’état of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon III). The “Commune”, a Parisian insurrection, took on the proportions of civil war in 1871. France, defeated in 1940, endured four years of Nazi occupation and the dictatorship of the French State (known as the “Vichy regime”) and, in the 1950s and 1960s, serious crises brought about by the colonial wars. Brazil was no different, whether through the internal conflicts during the reign of Dom Pedro I, the successive republics, the period of the Estado Novo, or, more recently, the military dictatorship.

These political crises gave rise to waves of exile, to France or to Brazil. On the French side, the artists of the “French Mission of 1816” came to serve at the Court of Rio de Janeiro because they were threatened for being Bonapartists. Half a century later, Victor Frond and Charles Ribeyrolles, both republicans, fled to Brazil from the despostism of Napoleon III.

During the Second World War, the writer Georges Bernanos supported Free France from Brazil, and the popular orchestra “Ray Ventura et ses collégiens” sailed between Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro to escape antisemitic persecution. On the Brazilian side, the list of exiles who chose France is extensive.

Among the distinguished exiles were José Bonifácio, in the 1820s, Dom Pedro II, who died in Paris in 1891, and Princess Isabel. The painter Cícero Dias fled the Estado Novo for Paris in 1937 and, during the Second World War, took part in the struggle against the occupier. Another Brazilian, Apolônio de Carvalho, fought heroically in the French Resistance. During the military dictatorship, around 7,000 Brazilians sought refuge in France. Among them were the geographer Josué de Castro, the economist Celso Furtado, sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso…

 

The abolition of slavery in Brazil: a Franco-Brazilian debate

After the 1848 Revolution, Victor Schœlcher, a member of the provisional government, was the author of the decree that abolished slavery in the French colonies, on April 4, 1848.

To the end of his life, Schœlcher campaigned for the abolition of slavery and denounced Brazil, which he regarded as guilty of stalling this issue and therefore unworthy, in his view, of belonging to the league of civilized nations.

Louis Couty, a professor of medicine working in Rio de Janeiro, sought to convince Schœlcher of the soundness of the Brazilian position. Couty professed to be an abolitionist, yet listed the arguments put forward in favor of maintaining the institution in Brazil: that immediate abolition would bring about the country’s ruin, owing to the lack of labor on the plantations. He praised the wisdom of the Brazilian government which, in his opinion, was transforming social customs before proceeding to emancipation, asserting that Brazil was free of racial prejudice and that freed people were fully integrated into society.

The “lobster war”

In the early 1960s, a crustacean became the source of serious tensions between President Goulart’s Brazil and General de Gaulle’s France. French fishing vessels ventured off the coast of Pernambuco and began catching lobsters in a zone located beyond Brazilian territorial waters, according to France, but regarded by Brazil as an exclusive fishing area. In 1962, the Brazilian Navy seized the French boats and escorted them back to sea. The same scenes were repeated the following year, but this time the French government sent a warship to the region. Brazilian public opinion was outraged, and the press grew inflamed. In March 1963, the French withdrew from the area. The dispute was ultimately resolved amicably and did not hinder Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Brazil, from October 13 to 16, 1964, at the end of a tour of ten South American countries.