In short
How Brazil’s national anthem evolved from Don Pedro I’s independence hymn to a tune used through monarchy, empire, and finally the republic—despite repeatedly bad or politically unstable lyrics.
Guest backgrounds
No guests are named in the transcript. The episode features hosts (Tom and Dominic) and references historical figures and a composer (Francisco Manuel de Silva; Louis Moreau Gottschalk).
Key claims
Brazil’s history is marked by weak central authority and slavery, making a unifying national story hard. Don Pedro I wrote the anthem’s tune after declaring “independence or death” (Sept 7, 1822). After his abdication (1831), the tune was kept while new lyrics were commissioned but often criticized as terrible or bland; for decades it was performed without words. The republic later kept the same tune after a contest rejected new music.
Notable examples
Portuguese court’s exile to Rio (1807–1808); slave mortality comparisons (US ~35 vs Brazil ~25); revolts (Pernambuco, Pará); Cisplatina becoming Uruguay (British-backed); Gottschalk’s “Grand Triumphal Fantasy” on the anthem; 1889 shift to republic under Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VODon Pedro II: Brazil's Last Emperor
0:06 to 1:16
Explore the life and interests of Don Pedro II, Brazil's last emperor.
“And this was a constant grumble in Anglo-Saxon England, which was the most heavily taxed country in the whole of Christendom.”
Don Pedro II: Brazil's Last Emperor
4:36 to 6:00
Explore the life and interests of Don Pedro II, Brazil's last emperor.
“Let's move on to more important things, such as Don Pedro II, the last emperor of Brazil.”
The Reality of Slavery in Brazil
6:00 to 8:34
Discuss the brutal history of slavery in Brazil and its lasting impact.
“Brazil, of course, is one of the world's biggest countries.”
The Challenge of a Unified National Anthem
8:34 to 11:24
Understand why Brazil struggled to create a unifying national anthem.
“And today, at least 60 % of Brazilians, probably more, are descended from African slaves.”
The Transfer of Power and Governance in Brazil
11:24 to 14:00
Learn about the unique historical moment when the Portuguese court governed from Brazil.
“of liberty and freedom is i mean a fairly common theme yes obviously that's impossible isn't it in the context exactly brazil well you need you need an enemy often with an anthem so for the Americans, it was the British.”
Dom João VI and Brazil's Unique Governance
14:00 to 18:01
Learn about the unusual governance of Brazil under Dom João VI and his eventual decision to appoint his son as regent.
“So this is the first time in history that an empire has been governed not from the metropolis, but from a colony that is in both the Western and the Southern hemisphere.”
Pedro's Role and the Path to Independence
18:01 to 23:02
Explore the relationship between Dom Pedro and the independence movement in Brazil, including key events leading up to the declaration.
“Because he's grown up and spent so much of his life in Rio, he cares much more about Brazil than he does about Portugal.”
The Declaration of Independence
23:02 to 28:00
Discover the dramatic events surrounding Pedro's declaration of independence and the significance of his rallying cry.
“The headline says, independence or death.”
The Turbulent Reign of Don Pedro I
28:00 to 33:18
Explore the chaotic events and challenges during Don Pedro I's rule in Brazil.
“exactly exactly for the next nine years this is the sound of brazilian freedom But bad news for fans of Don Pedro I.”
The Turbulent Reign of Don Pedro I
33:26 to 34:26
Explore the chaotic events and challenges during Don Pedro I's rule in Brazil.
“And of course, this isn't just a problem for blood-soaked conquistadors.”
Show all 19 chapters
The Search for a New Anthem
34:35 to 42:00
Discover the evolution of Brazil's national anthem after Don Pedro I's abdication.
“It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print.”
The Legacy of Don Pedro II
42:00 to 43:50
Explore the reputation and contributions of Don Pedro II amidst Brazil's tumultuous history.
“There was a guy called Lawrence Blair who came on last year to do a bonus episode about this.”
Louis Moreau Gottschalk's Influence
43:50 to 45:50
Learn about American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk and his connection to Brazil's national anthem.
“He traveled the Americas giving piano recitals.”
Political Turmoil After Abolition
45:50 to 48:00
Discover the political dynamics in Brazil after the abolition of slavery and the fall of Don Pedro II.
“Anyway, so that's what happened to his grand triumph of fantasy.”
The Quest for a New Anthem
48:00 to 50:20
Examine Brazil's attempts to create a new national anthem following Don Pedro II’s reign.
Challenges of National Identity
50:20 to 53:00
Analyze the difficulties Brazil faced in establishing its national identity and anthem lyrics.
Finalizing the National Anthem
53:00 to 56:00
Conclude with the establishment of the current lyrics for Brazil's national anthem and their significance.
“But by the early 1920s, the centenary of Brazilian independence.”
Unpacking Brazil's National Anthem
56:00 to 1:01:50
Examine the historical and cultural references in Brazil's anthem.
“Oh, beloved homeland of the sons of this ground.”
Political Uses of the Anthem
1:01:50 to 1:06:05
Explore how Brazil's anthem has been used in various political movements.
“And the rallies had lots of kind of cultural and sporting figures associated with the most famously Socrates, the captain of Brazil in 1982, who played for a team called Corinthians in Sao Paulo.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Tom Holland:This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's Business and Commercial Banking. One of the great things about finance is that it may result in you having to pay tax. And this was a constant grumble in Anglo-Saxon England, which was the most heavily taxed country in the whole of Christendom. And just when the Anglo-Saxons thought it couldn't get any worse, they got conquered by King Canute. and Canute imposed a tax rate that was effectively 100%.
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2:18Hi, have mercy, you are here to all just Go to m1
3:37Tom Holland:Hello, everyone. So that was the national anthem of Brazil, one of the great World Cup teams. And we haven't actually had any Brazilian history, I think, since the last World Cup. So it is great to have them back. And Brazil, of course, more closely associated with the World Cup, perhaps than any other team. They've won it a record five times. and the team that won in 1970 in mexico uh the team with pele and everybody often seen as the greatest national side of all time even though dominic i think world cup history specialists generally agree that england would have won that tournament had the cia not poisoned gordon banks
4:22Dominic Sandbrook:the england world keeper i don't think they do i think they probably do anyway that's by the by We lost to Brazil, as you will recall, Tom, in the groups.
4:30Tom Holland:Remember that game? I don't because I was only two at the time. Yeah. Anyway, enough about football. Let's move on to more important things, such as Don Pedro II, the last emperor of Brazil. And I mentioned him because he's very much a friend of the show, isn't he? He is. He ruled from 1831 to 1889. But that's a kind of peripheral detail. What matters about Don Pedro is that he has a sensational beard. He loves the library. He loves music. He loves scientific kind of all kinds of stuff particularly meteorite yeah because he's sending he was always sending people off on mad expeditions to recapture meteorites from the depths of the jungle and things i think that's what you want from a brazilian emperor yeah well we've got him back
5:11Dominic Sandbrook:today oh brilliant yes so hi everybody our first foray into brazilian history since the last world cup last time as tom says we did don pedro ii uh this time we're doing the anthem and don pedro the second is returning that's great to hear so a cameo appearance we've also got the first man to see the southern cross certainly the first european to see the southern cross anyway the southern cross is a star isn't it a constellation it's a constellation we have a some great characters we've got a jewish a half jewish half creole pianist from new orleans and we have the brazilian captain of the 1982 world cup who tom you will admire because he had the excellent name Yeah, top philosopher.
5:48Dominic Sandbrook:Socrates, exactly. We've gained one or two listeners since the 2022 World Cup. And since we haven't done any Brazilian history before, and since Brazil's history is actually largely unknown outside Brazil, we should do a little bit of a sort of panorama, a tour d 'horizon. Brazil, of course, is one of the world's biggest countries. It's the fifth biggest in size and the seventh in population. And it's presumably the country with the largest rainforest. Yeah, undoubtedly. But its history, oddly, for such a vast country, is almost completely unknown outside the Portuguese-speaking world. So to give you a sense of Brazil's story, until the 16th century, you've got this vast forested landscape, tropical landscape, where you have about 7 million indigenous people, semi-nomadic people, the Tupi, the Guarani, and so on.
6:32Dominic Sandbrook:then in 1500 the first european fleet arrives under the portuguese nobleman pedro alvarez cabral and cabral called it the area that he found he called it the island of the true cross the ilha the vera cruz once they discovered it wasn't an island they called it the terra de santa cruz the land of the holy cross but within about a decade so by the 1510s people started to call it the Terra do Brasil. And that's after the Brazil woods that they find there, which is a woods that gives you this red dye, this rich red dye. But if they hadn't had that rich red dye, they might've been called Vera Cruz.
7:10Dominic Sandbrook:It would be. It would probably be called, or Santa Cruz or something of that kind. Yeah, exactly. So under the Treaty of Tordesillas, which we've talked about before when we were doing episodes about the conquistadors, the new world is divided between Portugal and Spain. And because of miscalculations on the part of the Spanish, they don't realize how far into the Atlantic, basically, Brazil projects eastwards. And Brazil falls under the jurisdiction of Portugal. And this really is your classic example of what historians of imperialism called kind of extractive colonialism. So they treat Brazil, the Portuguese, as a massive cash cow, and they are using it for its natural resources of sugar, gold, and coffee.
7:50Tom Holland:There's an issue, isn't there? Because there aren't the kind of huge populations that are
7:54Dominic Sandbrook:necessary to do this extraction? Not at all. A lot of the indigenous people, of course, die. They die of disease. Vast numbers of them die. And so the solution, as elsewhere in the New World, but on a much greater scale than anywhere else, is slavery. This is the defining institution of Brazilian history, much more so than the United States, where we often think about slavery, we think about the United States, but Brazil looms the much larger. So almost half of the West African slaves transported across the Atlantic ended up on Brazilian plantations. So we're talking about four to five million people.
8:27Dominic Sandbrook:And Brazil was actually the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery in 1888. And today, at least 60 % of Brazilians, probably more, are descended from African slaves. There's a brilliant history, basically the only real, really good English language history of Brazil, by Lila Schwartz and Eloisa Starling, which I think I mentioned in the Dom Pedro second episode four years ago. And in their book, they joke, I think it's quite a common joke in Brazil, that Brazil is the world's second largest African country after Nigeria. And Dominic, can I ask you?
8:59Tom Holland:Yes. Imagine you're a slave being taken across the Atlantic. Yeah. Would you rather go to the United States or Brazil? Where would be worse? I think no question you'd rather go to the United States.
9:09Dominic Sandbrook:Slavery in Brazil is hell on earth. It's awful. And what makes it so hellish? it's extremely violent there's no abolitionist movement in brazil or a very small abolitionist movement compared with that in the united states it's much later and is it also that the white
9:23Tom Holland:exploitative class is much smaller relative to yeah the number of slaves so therefore they're
9:29Dominic Sandbrook:more frightened exactly more insecure so even by the standards of the new world slavery in brazil is extraordinarily cruel and actually it's a great question where would you rather go then And there's a very simple answer. Most people, the single thing you want to do as a human being is to prolong your own life. And in the United States, as a slave, you die at the age of 35. As a slave in Brazil, you die at the age of 25. So there's your answer. God. And slave revolts, because it's very violent, because central authority is so weak, because cloning institutions are so fragile, slave revolts are much more common in Brazil.
10:06Dominic Sandbrook:So you have gigantic slave uprisings in the 18th and 19th centuries, which then provoke violent repression in their turn. So in their book on Brazilian history, Schwartz and Stalin describe the Brazilian plantations as, quote, hell on earth, a frenzy of cruelty, a world of violence rooted in the figure of the master and his supreme power under the law, the marks of which were constantly registered on the bodies of his slaves. Now, why do I say all this when we're talking about the national anthem? Because the national anthem never mentions slavery at all, obviously. It's not the kind of thing you would sing about, is it?
10:37Dominic Sandbrook:No. The answer is that, as we've discussed in previous episodes, Germany, the United States, the Dutch Republic, and so on, a national anthem tells a story about a country and about the idea of the nation as a united family. It's very difficult to do that in Brazil because there's a fundamental instability that runs right through Brazilian history. Weak central authority, the legitimacy of authority always being questioned, a constant tension between the capital and the provinces, a sense that the next colossal rebellion is just around the corner. It's hard to tell a collective story about Brazil's history behind which everybody can unite.
11:13Dominic Sandbrook:and that explains why for so long the national anthem didn't have any lyrics and that wasn't a deliberate choice it was because they couldn't actually agree on what story they were going to
11:23Tom Holland:tell i mean i suppose if we think about so many of the anthems that we've done the idea of kind of liberty and freedom is i mean a fairly common theme yes obviously that's impossible isn't it
11:34Dominic Sandbrook:in the context exactly brazil well you need you need an enemy often with an anthem so for the Americans, it was the British. For the Dutch, it was the Spanish, even though their anthem is quite ambiguous about their relationship with the Spanish. The Germans, it was actually the French. And for the British, it's the Spanish and the French. There's almost always an adversary. And in Brazil, as we'll come to, it is at first the Portuguese. So let's get to the story of why Brazil needs an anthem in the first place. So we start at the beginning of the 19th century. So in 1808, the government general of Brazil, as it's called, is the biggest state in Portugal's colonial empire.
12:10Dominic Sandbrook:It's got about two and a half million people. So it's slightly smaller than Portugal itself. And a third of those people are slaves. There are two big cities, Rio and Salvador. And there, the slave population is actually bigger, probably half in Rio, three quarters in Salvador. There's a sort of Wild West vibe to these places. So people who visit, say, streets are pothole, they're full of rubbish. It's all very chaotic and very violent. And one British visitor called Rio one of the dirtiest congregations of human beings under the sun. If you're a refined, elegant Portuguese courtier, Rio is basically the last place in the world that you would ever want to live.
12:44Dominic Sandbrook:However, you are going to have to live there. Because in the summer of 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte had lost patience with Portugal's refusal to join his continental system. So this is the blockade, the embargo against Britain to try and drive Britain out of the Napoleonic Wars. And the French and the Spanish in November 1807 invaded Portugal and they basically stormed towards Lisbon. By the time they got to Lisbon, they found that the entire Portuguese royal family, the whole of the court, most of the political elite had gone. They had embarked on British ships under Sir Sidney Smith, which were about almost 15 ,000 people.
13:24Dominic Sandbrook:and they had sailed off to Brazil. An absolutely unprecedented moment. You know, the entire court fleeing across the Atlantic.
13:33Tom Holland:So it's a bit like the plans that were made to remove the British royal family in 1940. To Canada. To Canada.
13:38Dominic Sandbrook:In the US, exactly. Yeah. And chief among them are the Queen of Portugal, Dona Maria, who is kind of out of public life. She's got massive depression and mental illness. And her son and regent, who is João, and his son, Pedro. So three generations. And off they all go, and they establish their court in Rio, and here they run their empire in exile. So this is the first time in history that an empire has been governed not from the metropolis, but from a colony that is in both the Western and the Southern hemisphere. So it's a sort of really interesting kind of transfer of power from Europe to the Americas.
14:18Dominic Sandbrook:Anyway, 1815, Napoleon's beaten at Waterloo, and a year later, Dona Maria, who is the sort the nominal queen of Portugal dies. So now her son, João, is Dom João VI, king of Portugal. But he's still in Brazil. And he's still in Brazil. He's still in Rio. So Dom João is a very shy man. He's very religious. He basically spends all his time listening to sacred music. So listening to anthems. Yeah, he listens to anthems. Exactly. He's got constant panic attacks. He's always depressed. he wears the same coat all the time even in bed he loves this coat i mean i've got to say he does not sign the count of man he could have taken on napoleon no no no he's done well getting out to rio yeah and he is in no hurry to go back to portugal if he went back to lisbon the nobility the political elite political reformers liberal constitutionalists would just be badgering them him the whole time but what about all the potholes in rio and the rubbish he doesn't mind the potholes because Rio also has lovely birds and he's a big nature lover.
15:20Dominic Sandbrook:So he goes on expeditions to the countryside to look at the nature, nice trees and plants, tropical shrubs. Is he a fan of volleyball? Exactly. I don't think they're doing volleyball at this point. So at the end of 1815, he elevates Brazil to the same level as Portugal. So he now rules a kingdom called the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. I don't know exactly why the Algarves are plural. Maybe listeners can explain that to me now back in portugal the sort of liberal elites in porto and lisbon understandably hate this they like why on earth have we ceded first place why we're sharing it with these upstarts in in brazil also portugal's in a massive mess after the napoleonic wars their harvests have failed their economies in ruins they're no longer really top dog in their own empire they're very cross and then spring of 1821 they sent dom joao an ultimatum and they said come back to portugal or else basically and he said oh fine very disconsolately and before he left he called in his 22 year old son pedro so this is the future don pedro the first and he says to pedro i'd like you to stay in rio you're going to be my regent in brazil um now he and pedro don't get on at all but this is the only time they have ever have any connection because joao says to pedro Pedro, if Brazil breaks away, it would be better that it is by your hand than by the hand of some adventurer.
16:45Tom Holland:Oh, essentially, the king of Portugal and Brazil is basically telling his own son to lead a secessionist movement. Kind of, yeah. That's unexpected.
16:53Dominic Sandbrook:You could say he's being farsighted. That's another first for Portugal. Yeah, he's being farsighted. He's basically saying, probably Brazil is going to try and break away. I would like it to stay in the family. If it looks like it's going to break away, you'd be on the right side.
17:05Tom Holland:So it would be a bit like the Prince Regent being the governor of New York or something
17:10Dominic Sandbrook:and leading the revolution. George III being summoned back by angry mercantile elites in London and saying to the Prince Regent before he leaves, if the colonists refuse to pay their taxes, put yourself on their side and then it'll stay in the family. So an alternative history in which the first leader of the United States is the Prince Regent. What could have been? I mean, he's got his own teeth, which is something you could say for him. Yes, that's true. So now we have a very strange situation where Joao has gone back to Lisbon, but Pedro is the top dog in Rio. And Pedro is an interesting character.
17:41Dominic Sandbrook:He's very intelligent. He's very well-read. He loves all the new liberal ideas. He's been reading Voltaire. He's been reading Edmund Burke. He's also, as is so often the way, spoiled, impulsive, erratic. But he's not hiding out in bed wearing a coat. No, he's not wearing his coat in bed. He's more proactive. He's a bit of a leccer, actually. He's a hit with the ladies. So his coat would not come in handy. Because he's grown up and spent so much of his life in Rio, he cares much more about Brazil than he does about Portugal. And the local politicians recognize this and they say, well, if we work on this guy, we can use him as a figurehead to get independence.
18:16Dominic Sandbrook:Who wants to be pushed around by a lot of people who make port and corks or whatever they're making back in Portugal? Who cares about them? We can pursue our own destiny. In December 1821, the Portuguese, who have kind of got wind of all this, they asked Pedro to come back to Lisbon as well. Because they thought, you know, him staying in Brazil is just encouraging. separatism and then the brazilians presented him with a petition signed by 8 000 people this is a very famous moment in brazilian history tom i'm sure you're over it this was a reception at the royal palace in brazil in january 1822 he gets given this petition he's very touched and he says as it is for the good of all and for the general happiness of the nation i am ready tell the people i will stay hurrah hurrah everyone in rio is very pleased they can see what's coming so eight months go by and then on the 28th of august 1522 a ship arrives in rio from lisbon and the ship has a message the portuguese parliament which is called the corte has ordered pedro to come home immediately and they've accused his ministers in brazil of treason so the breach has come the ministerial council in rio send a messenger off to find pedro Pedro has gone off actually to visit Sao Paulo and he's on his way back.
19:31Dominic Sandbrook:So the messengers don't catch up with him until the morning of the 7th of September, 1822. Tom, the most consequential date in Brazilian history. Wow. So they find Pedro in a village outside Sao Paulo, not in very glamorous circumstances. He's riding this sort of ragged, beaten down old horse. He's wearing a very plain, unadorned military uniform. he's recently drunk some dirty water and is suffering intense diarrhea it's what two weeks
20:03Tom Holland:since we had all that dysentery on gallipoli so yeah great to have dysentery back on the show
20:08Dominic Sandbrook:it's very gallipoli he keeps him to get off his horse and relieve himself he cuts a terrible
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20:12Tom Holland:figure why i mean he's basically the ruler of brazil why isn't he looking a bit more glamorous why hasn't he got trumpets and glamorous uniforms and things and an escort why is he just wandering around like Don Quixote.
20:24Dominic Sandbrook:To be honest, I think Brazil is a little bit more Wild West at this point than you're imagining. I think it's hard to wear gold braid and epaulets when you are... Out in the jungle. Yeah, you're out in the badlands of Sao Paulo and you're crippled by intense stomach discomfort.
20:40Tom Holland:Yes, I suppose.
20:41Dominic Sandbrook:Anyway, a bloke comes up to him with the message, the demand that he go back to Lisbon. Pedro reads the message and he throws it on the ground and he stamps on it and his confessor is with him and pedro says to his confessor what should i do and the priest says if your majesty does not make himself king of brazil he will be taken prisoner by the kodesh and will probably be disinherited there is no other path except for independence and separation that's punchy stuff from the priest yeah and pedro to be fair to him even though he's in a bad way he responds excellently he says if this is what they want this is what they'll get the cortes are persecuting me they refer to me with contempt as a wretched boy and a brazilian well they will see what this wretched boy can do and then he tears from his hat the white and blue portuguese ribbon at this point white and blue are the colors of the portuguese monarchy and he draws his sword and he shouts unimprovably the time has come independence or death that is so south american isn't it it's very south american and people may doubt this because they may say, surely this didn't happen.
21:45Dominic Sandbrook:But actually, there are three separate eyewitness accounts that say that it did. Yeah.
21:49Tom Holland:And it's exactly the kind of thing, a romantically inclined young prince in South America, which is exactly what he'd say.
21:55Dominic Sandbrook:Even if suffering horrendous stomach cramps.
21:58Tom Holland:Yes.
21:59Dominic Sandbrook:So he returns to Rio a few days later, and he's in very good spirit. So he's recovered from his dysentery. He's recovered. He's recovered. And he's already wearing new colours. Instead of the blue and white of the Portuguese royal family, he's now wearing green and yellow and the reason he's wearing green and yellow we'll talk about the flag a little bit in the second half when we talk more about anthems the green comes from his father's braganza dynasty green is their color and he is married to a hapsburg so the yellow is the house of austria so the yellow in the brazilian flag is hapsburg yeah wow the green and yellow in the brazilian flag are the colors of house of braganza and the house of hapsburg
22:38Tom Holland:You get the sense with Maximilian, the Habsburg last emperor of Mexico.
22:43Dominic Sandbrook:The Habsburgs are not at their best in the new world. No, not at their best in the new world, but clearly not. No, the whole of the new world should belong to the Habsburgs, I think, except for the northern bit, which should all be British. So on the 20th of September, the Rio newspapers published the news that he has declared independence. The headline says, independence or death. this is the cry that unites all brazilians brazil has awoken from her lethargy and has resolved with dignity to shake off the weight that has oppressed her and two days later he writes his father the most famous letter in brazilian history a very overwrought letter i as the prince regent of the kingdom of brazil and its perpetual defender declare null and void all the decrees and all else that has been imposed on brazil by these factious abhorrent machiavellian chaotic depraved and pernicious corteche he loves an adjective that's the portuguese parliament he does they are no more than a gang of villainous anti-monarchists and murderers who are holding your majesty in the most ignominious captivity brazilian independence triumphs and will triumph or we will die defending it so quite prince harry to charles iii prince harry yes gosh if he could he could go to canada or something and declare yeah i mean canada is independent i suppose but He could cast off the British monarchy and set himself up as a rival Canadian monarch, I suppose.
24:05Dominic Sandbrook:I think he'd be quite suited to Canada. Prince Harry? Yeah. No. Yeah.
24:10Tom Holland:The Canadians are quite hardy people. Harry's fought in Afghanistan.
24:14Dominic Sandbrook:The Canadians wouldn't do all that business with the Elizabeth Arden cream, surely, when they got frostbite. Of course they would. No, they wouldn't.
24:20Tom Holland:Canadians are both, they're kind of, you know, Mounties. They like kind of galloping around in the world. I'm just thinking about, too, suddenly I've just thought about Justin Trudeau, and I think you might be right. Yeah, exactly. but also they're very very kind of woke and they're very woke not all of them though the prince harry forward in afghanistan ticks one box and the woke stuff ticks another pills to both
24:37Dominic Sandbrook:yeah it was to both mark carney and poilievre or something a man who looks like a tory mp from a casting agency and all the truck drivers yes the truck the alberta people the alberta oil men
24:49Tom Holland:i don't think alberta oil men surely have any time no sorry i'm getting the mother the alberta orman and mark carney right he took both anyway listen well it's great to have some canada on the
24:59Dominic Sandbrook:show anyway well they are hosting the world cup so there so brazil has become independent and pedro becomes don pedro the first constitutional emperor and perpetual defender of brazil and the green and gold the new green and gold colors are flying everywhere there's loads of merch there's fans there's mugs there's clocks there's loads of stuff in these new colors so it's a very unusual revolution. Schwartz and Starling in their book say it's both unique and banal, liberal and conservative, because on the one hand, they've created a new country. On the other hand, basically, there's absolutely no talk really of a republic or of a new dawn.
25:37Dominic Sandbrook:It's not like the American Revolution or the French Revolution. It's a new imperial monarchy. And there's no talk of abolitionism. No hint of abolitionism. No talk of a challenge to slavery. In fact, the people who are leading this revolution are people who often own lots of slaves they're land-owning elites what the brazilians want to do they look at what's going on with the spanish empire which has all completely fallen apart and feuding and you know chaos they want to avoid anything similar and that's why they go for an empire they think an empire is the best way to keep this vast sprawling territory of brazil intact and the emperor will function as a focal point and the emperor will allow us to transcend the regional divisions.
26:19Dominic Sandbrook:It's actually not a bad system. I think it's quite smart. So you've got an emperor, you've got a flag. Yeah. What about an anthem? Well, this is the thing. Who would you get to write the anthem of your new country? And the answer is you want somebody who's really invested in it. Somebody who's already shown himself to care a lot about independence and a man who will defy physical discomfort to do his bit for his country. Does Don Pedro write it? Don Pedro himself writes the tune for the new anthem which is called the hymn of independence now it's possible and indeed likely that he had help from court musicians but as far as i can tell there isn't a single brazilian historian who seriously doubts that he wrote it he did write it himself so he's the most musical emperor it's nero yeah he didn't write the words though so the words were written by a poet and newspaper editor called evaristo ferreira da vega ibaros and it's incredibly long this first anthem how long is it it's not as long as the dutch it's probably about eight verses or 10 rather than 14 what's the standard of the lyrics poor i think really poor i think actually don pedro comes out better than ever visto ferreira de vega y barros because some of i'll give you an example of the lyrics the august royal heir knowing the vile deceit in spite of the tyrants wish to stay in his brazil in spite of the tyrants in spite of the tyrants wish to stay in his brazil that's one verse pedro show your face your bold and virile soul we have in him the worthy chief of this empire of brazil we have in him the worthy chief we have in him the worthy chief of this empire of brazil
27:55Tom Holland:it's not a banger it's not a banger but you can see the appeal of it to don pedro i guess if there's going to be an anthem in which he's being praised for his bold and virile soul
28:04Dominic Sandbrook:exactly exactly for the next nine years this is the sound of brazilian freedom But bad news for fans of Don Pedro I. All is not well in his Brazil. Because I said at the beginning how violent and unstable it is. Throughout the 1920s, there are a series of revolts. There's a massive revolt in the northern province of Pernambuco. And the rebels there call for a separatist confederation of the equator, which has to be put down by the army. I mean, this is so South American. There's then a big blow to his prestige in 1825, he and his army lose control of their southernmost province, which is the Spanish-speaking province of Cisplatina, and this becomes the independent country of Uruguay, set up with British protection, because the British fancied having a friendly port on the river plate.
28:55Dominic Sandbrook:The first winner of the World Cup, of course. Exactly, first winner of the World Cup. I'm actually a big fan of Uruguay. I like Uruguay. I know you are. And then a year later, 1826, there are two big developments in Don Pedro's private life. First of all, his father, Dom João VI, dies in his palace outside Lisbon, back in Portugal. And it's not clear who's going to succeed him. Could Dom Pedro succeed him and become king of both kingdoms, become emperor and king again? Will somebody else in the family succeed him? Or, Dom Pedro's preferred solution, his own daughter, who's called Maria. Will she succeed his father?
29:33Dominic Sandbrook:I'm on the edge of my seat. Then in December 1826, the other development, his Habsburg wife, Maria Leopoldina, dies in childbirth. He has been a very poor husband. He's had loads of affairs. He's been a massive predator. And because of this, rumors sweep Rio that she has died because he has beaten her and been brutal and neglectful and so on. So that's bad for him. And by the end of the decade, the mood in Rio has definitively turned against him. People say he's a selfish brute, his wife died and it was his fault, and all he cares about is getting the Portuguese throne for his daughter Maria, because now there's a kind of civil war going on in Portugal.
30:16Dominic Sandbrook:So on the night of the 11th of March, 1831, riots break out in the city of Rio. And this is an event known, as you will know, Tom, it's called the Night of Bottles. I mean, of course, I do know that, but I'll tell you what, I always, why bottles? People are throwing bottles. Okay. Of course. pretty straightforward to be honest right um so the night of bottles unusually lasts for five days the nights of bottles usually last just one day i think a night usually lasts a night no you're right yeah i think the clue is usually in the name but not in this case it's different in the uh
30:49Tom Holland:southern hemisphere and then and in the new world so magical realist it is so there are all these
30:54Dominic Sandbrook:crowds fighting uh liberals are shouting long live the constitution blah blah blah throwing bottles the city's portuguese community because the city has a portuguese community they're shouting for don pedro weirdly he was the bloke who abandoned portugal but they're very much now on his side don pedro his cabinet say to him okay well to shore up your regime you need to crack down on the portuguese expat community they're absolute snakes that you've got to crack down on these people make an example of them he says no way i mean i'm a portuguese expat myself and he sacks all his ministers and appoints a load of cronies, loads of riots, loads of protests.
31:32Dominic Sandbrook:He tries everything to calm the crowds, but basically it's like, remember we did the Iranian Revolution? I do. It's like that, but sort of jollier and jauntier. So there are regular demonstrations and riots and stuff, and eventually he thinks, well, if I don't do something decisive, there's going to be a cause for a republic. That is the last thing we want. So in the early hours of the 7th of April, 1831, Don Pedro I, the first emperor of Brazil, announces that he will abdicate in favor of his son, who is only five years old, and is, of course, also called Pedro, and will become Don Pedro II. Yeah, a friend of the show.
32:08Dominic Sandbrook:Beard meteorite guy. Yeah, but who's only a little boy at this point. So Don Pedro I says to one of his courtiers, Here you have my act of abdication. I am returning to Europe and leaving a country that I loved very much and still love. everything is over between me and brazil forever sad he gets on a british warship there's always british warships hanging around in this story he gets on a british warship he goes back to portugal he fights this civil war he gets the throne for his daughter in the end and then precisely the point that he's just got the throne for his daughter he drops dead of tb age 35 that's quite convenient isn't it for his daughter for his daughter and that is the end of don pedro the first but this raises a huge question for brazil and for this podcast yes so the anthem because
32:59Tom Holland:the anthem was all about him so what are they going to do now yes what are they going to do now wow okay well if you enjoy a national anthem themed cliffhanger then i guess this is the cliffhanger to beat them all come back after the break to find out what the new anthem will be this episode is brought to you by lloyds now when you have ambitions being able to see the bigger picture is just so important and history definitely teaches us that my favorite example
33:32Dominic Sandbrook:not necessarily a brilliant man but the spanish conquistador hernan cortez he was a visionary he was an adventurer but he also grasped that the empire of the aztecs was vulnerable and he took his men in land and he was able to bring down the Aztecs with just a handful of men.
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34:19Tom Holland:So whatever your next move looks like, you can bank on Lloyd's to help you make it with confidence. Visit lloydsbank.com. Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goalhangers. The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer and no surprises along the way. WISE keeps things simple.
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35:35Tom Holland:So what's next? I've been liberated. We're going to take this city back. Over Medicaid. In an all new season, now streaming only on Disney+. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them.
35:51Dominic Sandbrook:This should be tons of fun.
35:53Tom Holland:Marvel Television's Daredevil, Born Again, now streaming only on Disney+.
36:00Tom Holland:hello everyone and welcome back to our brazilian themed rest is history today and the year is 1831 and you join us in a brazil that is in the midst of political turmoil but also musical turmoil because they have kicked out top tunester pedro the first so what are they now going to do about this anthem that he's left them which is basically him of praise to his virility and strength and wisdom and stuff because he's proved himself to be useless hasn't he so they've got and the thing
36:32Dominic Sandbrook:is they can't use new words for the anthem because he wrote the tune and it would be insane to have a tune written by the bloke you've just kicked out well unless it's really good well it's not that good i don't think it's not that good i think it's just generic early 19th century sort of jolly music. But there's good news. A local composer is already on the case. This is one of my favourite Brazilian composers of the 1820s, Francisco Manuel de Silva. Now, Francisco Manuel de Silva actually knew Don Pedro I because he had played in the chapel orchestra at the Imperial Palace. But clearly he wasn't a fan of the emperor, because as soon as the news of the abdication broke, Silva had started writing a celebratory hymn.
37:14Dominic Sandbrook:And it took him six weeks to do it. He premiered it at the São Pedro Theatre, St. Peter Theatre, and then he performed it again at a special gala along with a drama entitled The Fall of the Tyrant.
37:27Tom Holland:Okay, that's ungrateful.
37:28Dominic Sandbrook:Very ungrateful. Anyway, he probably never envisaged this as a national anthem. The title is not really very snappy. The title is To the Great and Heroic Day of the 7th of April 1831, a hymn offered to the Brazilian people by a fellow countryman. I mean, the problem with that is it's going to date fast, isn't it? It is going to date fast, yeah, because who's going to care about it? It's not clear at this point whether it has any lyrics or whether it's just instrumental. The lyrics aren't published publicly until two years later, so we don't know really whether they were sung at the first performance or whether they're actually written in the next two years.
38:03Dominic Sandbrook:They were written by a liberal judge who was called Ovidio Sarraiva de Carvalho y Silva. and the general consensus among historians is that Ovidio Sarraiva's lyrics for this anthem are absolutely terrible oh why they just babble they're really overwrought and the only thing that distinguishes them is their ferocious hostility to the Portuguese which is not something you often get in song lyrics I don't know many lucifobic no lucifobic songs so to give you a sample of these lyrics the cannons of tyranny no longer roar in brazil the monsters that enslaved it no longer thrive among us barbarians of jewish and moorish blood be gone our homeland is no longer your treasure house it's hard to imagine in the 21st century people singing the lyrics barbarians of jewish and moorish blood i mean this is obviously a reference to the sort of, I guess, the Reconquista and Portugal's kind of history of religious diversity.
39:07Tom Holland:Spain famously expelled both the Moors and the Jews. So maybe it's a reference to the fact that Portugal was distinct from that.
39:14Dominic Sandbrook:Maybe, maybe. Anyway, even at the time in the 1830s, a lot of people say, God, these are poor lyrics. And they drop them quite quickly. But they like the tune, Silva's tune. They would play it at public ceremonies without any words. So the years go by. under Don Pedro II, the second emperor. Brazil is very chaotic. There is massive tension between Rio and the provinces. There are endless revolts and rebellions. There's another one in Pernambuco. There's a slave revolt in Bahia in 1835. There's an unbelievably bloody rebellion in the northern state of Pará in the late 1830s, in which a third of the population were killed, about 30 ,000 people.
39:54Dominic Sandbrook:And amazing, you never heard of it. No, exactly. So in 1841, the political elite decided that the only way to try to impose a bit of stability and get a bit of legitimacy for the central government was to bring forward the coronation of the 14-year-old boy emperor, friend of the show, Don Pedro II. Because why? I think they just think we want to show, you know, that - The state is functioning. Yeah. Yeah, the state is functioning. A bit of braid. People love a bit of braid. Yeah. By this point, this anthem by Francisco Manuel da Silva, the one that he had written when Don Pedro was kicked out, this is accepted as the sort of de facto national anthem.
40:33Dominic Sandbrook:So they commission new lyrics for it. The new lyrics are just as bad as the previous lyrics. No, why? Are they being horrible about the Portuguese again? No, they're not. They're just bland and they're just rubbishy. Here we go. When you come, auspicious day, may happiness dawn among us. we see in pedro the second the adventure of brazil that's mad that's gonna date even faster
40:55Tom Holland:i mean what if what happens if he dies or they decide he's rubbish and send drive him into his
40:59Dominic Sandbrook:exactly at this point the authorities basically say okay just keep humming yeah just keep humming so keep playing this hymn by francisco manuel da silva whenever the monarch goes to public events whenever this military ceremony is, but no lyrics. So for the next 40 years, Brazil has a tune, but it doesn't have any words. And Dominic, can I just ask,
41:22Tom Holland:this tune is the tune that they still have to this day, is it? Yes, it is. When you see Brazil, the Brazilian team line up, the music that you hear is the one that they're all humming at this point. And remember, think about the lyrics they could have had.
41:33Dominic Sandbrook:That's the question. They brought back a medley of the old lyrics. Anyway, so for the next 40 years, they have a tune, but no words. You know, these are very turbulent and interesting 40 years for Brazil. This is the 40 years when they basically invent Brazilian identity. So they have this idea of a unique tropical culture, distinct from Europe, distinct from Portugal. Brazil actually manages to win a war, one of the bloodiest wars that people have never heard of, the War of the Triple Alliance against Paraguay. There was a guy called Lawrence Blair who came on last year to do a bonus episode about this.
42:06Dominic Sandbrook:It's a mad war. So you listen to that. About a million people died in this war. Insane. There are constant slave revolts. They do end up abolishing slavery in 1888. But presumably it remains kind of deeply racist. Massively embedded, even to this day. Even to this day, it's hugely embedded. Now, during all this time, Don Pedro II, as we described in our previous World Cup episode on Brazil in 2022, has been a pretty good emperor. He's very widely admired and respected abroad. He loves art. He loves science. He founds opera houses and things. He's quite a nice guy, isn't he?
42:41Tom Holland:He's called the Louis XIV of the tropics. But that's not necessarily... A good thing. A compliment. Yeah. I mean, Louis XIV isn't a very nice man.
42:48Dominic Sandbrook:No, he's a much nicer guy than Louis XIV. He's a nice guy. He goes around writing letters, fan letters to like Richard Wagner and Louis Pasteur and Victor Hugo and stuff. The one thing he doesn't have is words for his anthem. He doesn't have that. there is one attempt during his reign to do something with the anthem and this is courtesy of a very unexpected character an american composer called louis moro gottschalk and gottschalk he came from new orleans his father was a jewish immigrant from london and his mother was a creole from the future dominican republic santa domingo and gottschalk was a child prodigy he used to play the piano in hotels in New Orleans.
43:31Dominic Sandbrook:He was so talented that when he was 13, his father took him to Paris. And the Paris Conservatoire refused to even hear him play when they found out he was American. The head of the piano faculty at the Paris Conservatoire said, and I quote, there is no point. America is a country of steam engines. So they didn't even hear him play. Anyway, what happened to Gottschalk? He traveled the Americas giving piano recitals. He was thrown out of the United States in 1865 after having been accused of having an affair with a piano student in Oakland, California. He claimed that he had been framed by a rival of the piano manufacturer Chickering and Sons, which was the brand of piano that he used in his tours.
44:19Dominic Sandbrook:And what's the thought on that? I didn't. I mean, who can say? I don't know. I don't even know what the rival was called. The references to this story are so opaque. I don't know who Chickering and Sons' great rivals were. I don't know how deeply they were embedded in the social life of Oakland, California. Well, I have to just on this subject. Skate over. Ignorance. Yeah. Total ignorance. In the summer of 1869, Gottschalk arrived in Rio and he was greeted as a celebrity. Piano prodigies didn't often come to Rio. And Don Pedro II thought he was brilliant and was all over him. And Gottschalk decided to write two different works inspired by the Brazilian anthem.
44:59Dominic Sandbrook:So he wrote a march that was dedicated to Pedro II and a piano work called The Grand Triumphal Fantasy on the Brazilian National Anthem, which was dedicated to Pedro's daughter, Isabel. And The Grand Triumphal Fantasy was a massive hit at the time and remains current in Brazil to this day. There was a big sort of hoo-ha in the late 20th century about reinterpretations of the national anthem because the military dictatorship of the 60s and 70s tried to stamp them out. And the grand triumphal fantasies, bizarre as it sounds, came very popular on the left of Brazilian politics and was used by the Democratic Labour Party in its TV ads in the 1980s.
45:40Dominic Sandbrook:So this guy Gottschalk, the guy who'd possibly disgraced himself in Oakland or been framed by a piano manufacturer. I like to think the second. I like the sound of him. Anyway, so that's what happened to his grand triumph of fantasy. You can look it up on YouTube and listen to it if that's the way you like to spend your time. Gottschalk himself came to a very sad end after he'd finished it. On the 24th of November 1869, he was playing the piano at a concert in a Teatro Lyrico Fluminense in Rio. He had just finished his own piece, which was unbelievably called Morte, Death, when he collapsed. I can't believe you're laughing about this.
46:19Dominic Sandbrook:Chortling away, it turned out he had yellow fever. Oh, that's even funnier. And a month later, he died in his hotel. But here's the weird thing. He didn't die of the yellow fever. He died of an overdose of quinine, which he'd presumably taken to combat the yellow fever. Hilarity ensues. So that's a strange story. Anyway, back to Pedro II. If you heard our previous podcast about him, you will recall that in the late 1880s, public opinion turned against him. They accused him of being a banana, didn't they? Do you remember that? Yeah. They used to call him Pedro Banana. And the other guy, who was the pair?
46:53Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, Louis-Philippe. Some sort of great fruit salad bug. The whole series writes itself. It does. Okay, so people turned against him. Why? The rich coffee planters were furious about the abolition of slavery. liberal intellectuals that swung towards republicanism they thought that he was old and boring and you know an unsuitable figurehead for brazil and the army had turned against him they were obsessed with ideas about progress and modernization and they thought he and his court were backward and all this so they basically kicked him out in november 1888 and they replaced him with this another old man actually a marshal with a massive beard called marshal deodora de fonseca well what's the point in kicking out an old bloke he's got a big beard and then getting another one mad insane exactly especially as don pedro ii was basically the best leader brazil's ever had yeah don pedro ii didn't have the will to fight he went off into paris he died in paris you may remember he had a massive state funeral with basically hundreds of thousands of people turned out yeah because they all loved him exactly so brazil is now a republic dominated by the big coffee oligarchs and the army big coffee big coffee big coffee is genuinely running brazil at this point they they rip don pedro's uh name off all the streets and all the buildings it's the classic story they change the image on the banknotes so like um philip the second then the dutch revolt exactly in a dutch national anthem podcast they also tweet the flag they do all sorts of things but they keep their hapsburg stuff well as we should see they do there's still the yellow right what color do brazil play in they play they wear yellow shirts they do need a new anthem well they need new lyrics right because the tune remains well they decide at this point they'd like a new tune as well okay so they have a public contest for a new anthem they have chosen the words already they want the anthem to fit the words they've got they've chosen a poem by a liberal writer called and they've all got massive names this writer is called jose joaquim the campos to costa the madero she albuquerque and he's written the poem please tell me this is good it's not great actually i mean you tell me i think it's probably better than the previous ones i'll read it to you and you can tell what you think may this rebel song be an unfurled mantle of light under the vastness of these skies this rebel song that comes to redeem our past from inglorious deeds liberty liberty above us spread thy wings through the struggles in the storm grant that we hear thy voice it's better than the previous ones it's better than the previous ones a little gassy yeah gassy exactly exactly so these are the lyrics 29 people enter the competition to write the tune they have multiple rounds to the eurovision song contestar there is an ominous sign before the second round a journalist asks this new president marshal deodoro with his massive beard what do you think of the entrance so far and deodoro said i prefer the old anthem oh okay so they have the final at the teatro lyrico fluminense the place where gotschulk the pianist had died with his yellow fever they have the final at this theater they pay the finalists they pay them all twice marshal deodoro and his ministers are listening in the royal box deodoro leaves the royal box to consult it's like that moment in the eurovision when you're waiting for the results to come in then he comes back into the box with his ministers they retake their seats the interior minister stands and he reads the result and he says after all that we'll stick with the old anthem after all good so good they've stuck with the old anthem but they haven't got any lyrics for it still marshal deodoro falls from power after a year falling out with congress is this because they cross with him for not choosing a new no i don't think the anthem plays a massive part in that actually frankly it'd be nice to claim and it would make the episode better yeah it wouldn't be true the national anthem revolt a marshal de adera's fall just a year after they've kicked out don pedro the second sets the tone for what follows so to quote the brazilian writer pedro vasquez in the next century brazil had 12 states of emergency 19 military revolutions two presidential resignations three presidents prevented from assuming office four presidents deposed seven different constitutions four dictatorships and nine authoritarian governments which is a lot
51:09Tom Holland:the consequence of that is that it's very difficult to arrive to consensus for new lyrics for the
51:14Dominic Sandbrook:precisely precisely precisely priority no because basically there'll be a coup in another year yeah and they'll want their own lyrics so there's no lyrics now the problem for the government is people have started to make up their own lyrics there are complaints flooding in all the time a people are singing will sing the anthem in school teachers will get their children their pupils to sing the anthem but the teachers will make up their own lyrics and some regional governments have decided to start imposing their own lyrics which are generally about their own state so there'll be a supposedly a national anthem but it turns out that the lyrics are all like oh this state is absolutely brilliant and the best of all states and the others are useless or whatever well unless you're bierthelbrecht yes i guess so yeah we're no better than anybody else hopefully in the future people won't recoil from us in horror anymore yeah um in 1909 they held yet another contest to write lyrics for the old anthem and this is won by a man called osorio duque estrada he is the man who wrote the lyrics that exist today what's he like this man who sets his stamp on brazilian musical history it's hard to find out anything very interesting about him he's a sort of generic early 20th century latin american intellectual with a sort of curled mustache and a very stiff collar he shares all the sort of idealistic enthusiasms of the early 20th century so progress modernity and so on by winning this competition he has landed himself in a world of pain because for the next decade his lyrics are constantly being debated in congress and in the press.
52:56Dominic Sandbrook:And he has to rewrite them nine times. So he must be heartily sick of having won this competition. And this drags on and on and on. But by the early 1920s, the centenary of Brazilian independence. Now, you will recall, Tom, the most important date in Brazilian history is the 7th of September, 1822, when Don Pedro II declared independence. Well, the centenary in 1922 is fast approaching and rio is going to host a world expo to celebrate they do i have so many world expos at this time they do then people love a world expo they've got 14 countries coming a very strange lineup actually so the people you'd expect to go like the us britain france are going portugal are going also just a little random european countries czechoslovakia denmark norway but not many south american countries is that because they're jealous i think they just don't care yeah right maybe they are jealous they've built some absolutely thrilling attractions so there is the main thing is a series of pavilions there's the statistics pavilion oh brilliant there's the agriculture and roads pavilion there is the large industries pavilion there is the small industries pavilion i'm amazed more people aren't going well callum very foolishly i think has said it sounds rather like the rest is history festival hampton corp yeah people who come into that are going to love our statistics tent but three million people go to this expo in rio so that's even more than going to the rest is history festival hampton corp palace the opening of the small industries and statistics pavilions is fast approaching they need an anthem they need the lyrics so eventually the federal government do a deal with this bloke, Osorio Duque Estrada.
54:44Dominic Sandbrook:They say, okay, we're just going to buy, stop now, stop changing the lyrics, we're going to buy them off you. They buy them off him for 5 million reich. That sounds a lot. Which is apparently, I learn from some enthusiastic Googling, was half the price of a new car in Rio at the time. Oh, so not very much. It's not enormous, man. No.
55:03Tom Holland:I mean, you have to write another anthem if you want the rest of the car.
55:07Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, to get the rest of the car. the very first radio broadcast in brazilian history was the playing of this new anthem of the was the old anthem with the new lyrics on the morning of the 7th of september it was broadcast from corcovado which is this mountain above rio the mountain where the statue of christ the redeemer stands today and actually christ the redeemer they began work on it this year so the first foundations had been laid um while the sound of the anthem is drifting across the city so it's
55:39Tom Holland:It's a great year for Brazilian identity, national identity.
55:42Dominic Sandbrook:It is. It's a brilliant year for Brazilian identity. Now, we come to the lyrics. I will read these, and you can tell me whether you think they're better than previous lyrics. Okay. So these are the lyrics we have today. Oh, beloved idolized homeland. Hail, hail, adored land. Amongst a thousand others art thou, Brazil. Oh, beloved homeland of the sons of this ground. Thou art a kind mother. Beloved homeland, Brazil. I mean they're like every other anthem
56:11Tom Holland:They're not great are they No so I mean there are loads and loads and loads of national anthems like that So if we haven't done a national anthem it's basic because they're all like that
56:19Dominic Sandbrook:They're so generic and so flowery and meaningless I think I just don't think they're great However if you look up the text there are three specific references Which it might be interesting to unpick just quickly So that was actually the chorus that I read there that was the chorus the opening lines of the first verse are the placid shores of the iparanga heard the resounding shout of a heroic people and the sun of liberty and shining beam shone in the homeland sky at that instant so the iparanga is the stream outside sao paulo where don pedro with diarrhea got the message and he shouted liberty or death and drew his sword in 1822
57:03Tom Holland:So it's kind of nice that Don Pedro is still getting a little nod.
57:09Dominic Sandbrook:Exactly. Exactly. The next reference, Brazil, an intense dream, a vivid ray of love and hope to earth descendeth. If in thy beautiful, smiling and limpid sky, the image of the cross blazeth. Now, you might think the cross, this is Christian cross. It's not really. It's the Southern cross. The word in Portuguese is cruzeiro. and this is this constellation that's only visible in the southern hemisphere it was first described by a portuguese astronomer joe falash who had gone on the first voyage to brazil in 1500 he set up an astrolabe on the beach to work out where they were using you know the stars and stuff and he wrote a letter to king manuel of portugal describing the southern cross and including a rough sketch of it the first sketch ever done so the southern cross became a great symbol of brazil as it is a symbol of australia new zealand the new coat of arms of republican brazil when don pedro ii was kicked out actually includes the southern cross so the southern cross matters great the cruzeiro matters a great deal to brazil they had four different currencies in the 20th century called cruzeiros and there is fittingly it's a world cup series there is a football team called cruzeiro founded in 1921 in bela or a zonch and this is a team that produced two of the players from the 1970 world cup winning team tostow and piazza and jesino who scored in every round of the 1970 world cup he played for cruzero later on and ronaldo the original ronaldo if you remember him tom with his gappy teeth had a bald yes he played for cruzero before he moved to psv a little bit like zach polanski
58:56Dominic Sandbrook:uh yeah i can see the resemblance the teeth the teeth yeah yeah better at football than zapolanski yeah much better who doesn't strike me as a natural sportsman he doesn't exude athletic prowess does he zapolanski so near the end of the anthem there's one other reference brazil of eternal love may the starry ensign which thou displayest be a symbol and the starry ensign is the Brazilian flag. And actually, we've made a few references to the Brazilian flag. Brazil's flag is surely one of the most distinctive in the world. Yeah, for sure. And I hadn't realized it
59:28Tom Holland:was a Habsburg tribute flag.
59:30Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah. So basically, although it's changed multiple times, it is a tweaked version of the original flag adopted by Don Pedro in 1822. So if Brazil beat the Netherlands, philip the second will have the last laugh as a hapsburg yeah yeah he would so the green the house as i said the house of broganza which ruled portugal since 1422 the yellow diamond hapsburg that's don pedro's wife maria leopoldina then there's a blue circle in the middle now originally in the blue circle there was an astrolabe hence the thing that you use to look at the stars and um the astrolabe is also in the middle of the portuguese flag but when they kicked out the portuguese they replaced it with the stars including the southern cross and their stars represent the 27 different states of brazil and finally there is a motto so brazil's flag is very unusual having a motto written on it and the motto is ordain e progressal and this means order and progress.
1:00:33Dominic Sandbrook:And this is a quotation from a French writer, Auguste Comte.
1:00:43Dominic Sandbrook:Love as a principle, order as a basis, progress as your goal. Order and progress. It's the sort of motto, the positivist movement. And in Latin America, people were obsessed with positivism in the late 19th century. So this is a sort of anti-clerical, scientific progress, strong central government embrace modernity all of this august count was the great sort of progenitor of this people loved him in brazil and they put his order and progress on the flag unfortunately order and progress were not really the guiding principles of brazilian life in the 20th century and actually this wednesday tom we have a bonus episode with paul rouse historian of sport as well as of Ireland, who is going to be talking about how the Brazilian military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985, used football, and in particular the World Cup winning team of Pelé and Co in 1970, how they used football to launder their image.
1:01:43Dominic Sandbrook:So a very interesting story. Anyway, the anthem itself never has a fixed political meaning, and that's been true of so many anthems that we've talked about so you know how um we were talking before in previous episodes about how people would basically co-opt or appropriate anthems yeah and and turn them for political purposes well this has been the case with the brazilian anthem too so in the 1990s when poor rural workers were demonstrating and occupying farms and calling for land reform they would sing the national anthem and uh one of them said later when she was interviewed she said it was the best way to stop the police from attacking us they had no way of shooting at unarmed people who were seeing the brazilian national anthem but also of course very popular on the right so when jay bolsonaro the i have to say very unlovely uh president of brazil sort of big chum of trump's yeah trump adjacent president of brazil when he lost his bid for re-election 2022 and his supporters went berserk to the sort of maga style uprising and a lot of them were filmed singing the national anthem while doing nazi salutes idea which i think is not not very admirable but the most celebrated use of the anthem comes from the 1980s so i mentioned the military dictatorship in the mid 1980s the military dictatorship was losing its grip on brazilian society and it was under huge pressure from a movement called diretas ja direct elections already which was demanding free presidential elections and they organized these huge rallies with hundreds of thousands of people.
1:03:18Dominic Sandbrook:And the rallies had lots of kind of cultural and sporting figures associated with the most famously Socrates, the captain of Brazil in 1982, who played for a team called Corinthians in Sao Paulo. And he got all of his teammates to wear political messages on their shirts. Is that the only mention we get of Socrates? That's the only mention we get of Socrates, yeah. Oh, I was hoping for a little bit more. I teased you with it, but I mean, we can talk about Socrates privately if you're desperate to. If you want an analysis of how he worked with Adair, Falcao, and Serrazo in the midfield of 1982, Tom, I am the person to talk you through that.
1:03:55Tom Holland:And his relationship with Plato.
1:03:57Dominic Sandbrook:Yeah, exactly. How does this relate to the anthem, this movement that Socrates is a part of? One of the most celebrated figures in this movement was a singer called Fafard de Belen, who was then in her late 20s. And she was seen as a great sex symbol in the 1980s. The voice of the masses. So she has this very low, husky voice, a little bit like the sound that you associate with Portuguese Fado music. Oh, yeah. So this kind of husky kind of lament. Yeah. And she would go to these rallies for Fado Belém, and she would give this performance of the national anthem. The regime had banned anything but very, very formal interpretations of the anthem.
1:04:39Dominic Sandbrook:They said, you have to follow the 1920s orchestration. if you do anything else with it you are disrespecting the anthem and disrespecting brazil so you can't do it in a different way so this is a little bit like remember the the star spanker banner and we were talking about jimmy hendrix and whatnot yeah this is carrying that to another degree this is basically saying you're breaking the law if you do anything other than do it in this very rigid formal way and she would go to these rallies with hundreds of thousands of people and she would give very very dramatic reinterpretations of the anthem but playing within the rules no breaking the rules breaking the rules incredibly slow mournful melodramatic and people would be crying during the anthem like thousands of people would be crying while she was singing it and it became the emblematic sound of protest in the 80s and if people want a sense of what I mean, if you go onto her YouTube channel, you can find a clip of her performing it in that style in the Senate in Brasilia in 2013.
1:05:45Dominic Sandbrook:Because for the 25th anniversary of the new democratic constitution that had been introduced in 1988, when the dictatorship finally fell to celebrate the anniversary, they invited her into the Senate to give her performance, to give her rendition. And she did it there to celebrate the fact that democracy had been reintroduced and the protesters had ultimately won. And so, Tom, we end with that very rare thing on the rest is history, a relatively happy ending.
1:06:14Tom Holland:Well, that's wonderful. And actually, in a manner of speaking, we're going to have the same in our next episode, the final episode, which is going to be about the national anthem of South Africa. And in that, as well as football,
1:06:27Dominic Sandbrook:there will be quite a lot of rugby rugby excellent all right and so obviously if you're a massive fan
1:06:33Tom Holland:of rugby or indeed if you're a fan of nelson mandela you may want to listen to that immediately and if you're not already a member of the rest is history club you can get that by joining us at the rest is history.com thank you dominic thank you everyone for listening and uh let's say goodbye with the national anthem of brazil bye-bye bye-bye Thank you.
1:07:27above
1:08:18Dominic Sandbrook:Hi everybody, it's Dominic Sandbrook here. There are two weeks to go until the rest is history's inaugural festival at Hampton Court Palace. And frankly, I could not be more excited. There's going to be medieval combat. There are going to be all sorts of big name historians. You can go to the palace. You can feast like Henry VIII on the very lawns where he walked. In the sunshine, I'll be talking to Tracy Borman about the Tudors. I'll be talking to Katja Hoyer about Weimar Germany. I'll be talking to Ian Hislop about the history of satire. So it's on two days. It's on Saturday the 4th of July and Sunday the 5th of July.
1:08:53Dominic Sandbrook:The bad news is we have actually sold out the allocations that we were given by Hampton Court for both days. The good news, however, we have persuaded Hampton Court to let us have more people. So there will be a handful of extra tickets available for both the Saturday and the Sunday. Now, we do expect all of those extra tickets to sell out really quickly. So please do not wait to get your hands on them. The tickets are exclusive for club members. It's one of the benefits of being a member of the Rest is History Club. Frankly, if you're not a member and you would like to go to the festival, the only way to do that is by joining the club.
1:09:30Dominic Sandbrook:So you have to head to therestishistory.com to sign up, and then you go to the members area once you've signed up, and you select Festival to get your tickets. We are really hoping to see as many of you there as possible in the sunshine at Hampton Court. Bye-bye.
From the publisher
What does the Brazilian national anthem reveal about its history of slavery and revolt? Why did the king of Portugal rule his country all the way from Rio in the 19th century? Who was the first emperor of Brazil? And, why was the second anthem a symbol of liberty?
Join Tom and Dominic as they delve into the chaotic episode of Brazilian history that resulted in its first and second national anthems.
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Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations.
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