Contribution: Tempo de Dificuldades (part 1) by EmperorBr

With permission from EdMarCarSe:

Tempo de Dificuldades, or in english, Time of Troubles - Part 1

"War does not determine who is right – only who is left."

Mahatma Gandhi

As Dom Pedro II continued to rule wisely the Empire of Brazil, overseeing an Golden Age where a brazilian culture was developed, trade increased with friendly countries such as Mexico, its prestige increased due to the monarch's patronage of the arts, education and recognition abroad, the armed forces were experienced due to the trials of the War of the Triple Alliance, the seeds of the chaos that would follow were being planted in the last decades of his remarkable reign, where a new generation emerged, different from the previous one who saw in the empire as the only way of protecting Brazil's territorial integrity and the monarch as a symbol to unify the enormous and sparsely divided country, with new ideas, thoughts and events around the world that would propel the most powerful nation in South America to chaos and uncertainty in the trying times that would follow.

The monarchy of Brazil was new, born when Dom Pedro de Alcântara, heir to his father Dom João VI of Portugal, declared independence of Brazil as its new emperor in 1822. The so called "Primeiro Reinado" or First Reign of Pedro I was short, where he abdicated to fight against his brother Dom Miguel in the name of his daughter Maria in the Liberal Wars, the second time the members of the House of Braganza fought one another, a particular curse that would happen decades later, with horrifying results. D. Pedro II "The Magnanimous", ruled Brazil from the age of fifteen, serving as a symbol and wise Head of State that by the hair's breadth managed to stay united. As previously mentioned, he oversaw over a Golden Age, but the one thing throughout his life that would plague his thoughts over the survival of the monarchy was the birth of a male heir. To him, as he grew older and ever more tired, the monarchy wouldn't survive after him, having made few efforts to educate his eldest daughter Isabel in how to rule, serving for the opponents as a symbol of caricature, of tiredness that supposedly was the monarchical institution.

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This opened the path for a new generation that followed different ideas to emerge and begin to spread, such as republicanism, positivism and abolitionism. The first was in the most part civilian, in the areas where the United States of Brazil would be formed, desirous of a new path where the monarchy was abolished and that would follow the United States path, gaining support from part of the middle-class but primarily from the landowners who previously used slave labor that were wroth with rage at the handling of Golden Law (Lei Áurea) and were looking for a better government for themselves and their interests. The second was developed primarily in the armed forces, whose participation in the War of the Triple Alliance gave it power, prestige and influence that it never had before, being influenced by the ideals of progress, end of slavery, republicanism and in the case of slavery a hatred of it due to the draft of slaves for the army that retured as freedmen, all in the lower ranks that would feel gratitude to the monarchy and serve as a pillar to the remaining imperials. The last one, abolitionism, was crucial to understand how the different layers of society were divided, with those who were its primary users joining the republican side as a manner of rebellion and insubordination, the end of this terrible institution in 1888 would be the end of the beginning, where the gunpowder barrel that was Brazil would prove devastating to the young brazilian society, never to achieve its former cohesion and peacefulness.