The Rest Is History - 681. Brazil: The Emperor’s Anthem (Part 5)

Episode Date: June 21, 2026

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. _______ Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠restishistory.com⁠ To read our new newsletter, sign up at: therestishistory.com/newsletters Advertise with us: [e-mail] _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton  Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill   Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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%. Yeah, well, that was one very big change, Tom, but another tax change is upon us. And this is the advent of making tax digital for income tax. And if you're at all concerned about it, this is where Lloyd's come in, because they're here to help make that change much simpler for

you with a useful HMRC-recognised accounting tool that will help you stay in line with all the making tax digital requirements. And the brilliant thing about this is, is that it is free for Lloyd's business account customers. So when it is time to digitize your income tax, you can bank on Lloyd's. Search Lloyd's business accounts to find out more. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system.

Demands Agility and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. This spring, denim gets a softer, lighter update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer.

Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. 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, the team with Pelle 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, the England Whelkeeper. I don't think they do. I think they probably do. Anyway, that's by the bye. We lost to Brazil, as you were a call time in the groups.

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 the second, the last emperor of Brazil. And I mention 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 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 the Second. 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.

It's only 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 some great characters. We've got a Jewish, a half-colle. Jewish, half-creole pianist from New Orleans. And we have the Brazilian captain at the 1982 World Cup, who Tom, you will admire because he had the excellent name. Yeah, top philosopher. 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 a panorama, a tour d'Orison. 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 it's 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 seven million indigenous people, semi-nomadic people, the Tupi, the Guarani and so on. 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 Ilya de Verro 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 have started to call it the Terra de Brazil, and that's after the Brazil wood that they find there, which is a wood that gives you this red dye, this rich red dye.

But if they hadn't had that rich red dye, they might have been called Vera Cruz. It would be. It would probably be called or Santa Cruz or something of that kind. Yeah, exactly. So under the Treaty of Tordesias, 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. There's an issue, isn't there? Because there aren't the kind of huge populations that are necessary to do this extraction. Not at all.

A lot of the indigenous people, of course, die. They die of disease. Fast numbers of them die. And so the solution, as elsewhere in the new world, 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

4 to 5 million people. And Brazil was actually the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolished 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 Staling, which I think I mentioned in the Don Pedro the 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? 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. Slaver 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 exploitative class is much smaller relative to the number of slaves. So therefore they're 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? And then 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 institutions are so, cloning institutions are so fragile, slave revolts are much more common in Brazil. So you have gigantic slave uprisings in the 18th and 90th centuries, which then provoke violent repression in their turn. So in their book on Brazilian history, Schwartz and Stalin described 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 mentioned slavery at all, obviously.

It's not the kind of thing you would sing about, is it? 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 sort of 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 was 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.

And that explains why, for so long, the national anthem didn't have any lyrics. Now, it wasn't a deliberate choice. It was because they couldn't actually agree on what story they were going to 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. And obviously, that's impossible, isn't it? In the context of Brazil. Well, you need an enemy often with an anthem. So for the Americans, it was the British.

For the Dutch, it was the Spanish. You know, even though their anthem is quite ambiguous about their relationship with 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. 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 and 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 violence. 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 on the world that you would ever want to live. 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 807 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. We're talking about almost 15,000 people, and they had sailed off to Brazil. An absolutely unprecedented moment, you know, the entire court fleeing across the Atlantic. So it's a bit like the plans that were made to remove the British royal family in 1940.

To Canada. To Canada. In the US, exactly. Yeah. And chief among them are the queen of Portugal, Donna Maria, who is kind of out of public life. She's got massive depression and mental illness. And her son and regent, who is Joao and his son. Pedro. So three generations. And off they all go and they established 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. Anyway, 1815, Napoleon's beaten at Waterloo, and a year later, Donna Maria, who is the sort of nominal queen of Portugal, dies. So now her son, Joao, is Dom Joao the sixth king of Portugal. But he's still in Brazil. And he's still in Brazil. He's still in Rio.

So Domzioao 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 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 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. 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

the kingdom called the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Al-Garves. I don't know exactly why the Al-Gaurs 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 I was sharing it with these upstarts in Brazil? Also, Portugal is 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 Domzouaul 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. Now, he and Pedro don't get on at all, but this is the only time they ever have any connection. Because Zhao says to Pedro, if Brazil breaks away, it would be better that it is by your hand than by the hand of some adventurer. Oh, essentially the king of Portugal and Brazil Yeah Is basically telling his own son to lead a secessionist movement Kind of, yeah That's unexpected

You could say he's being far-sighted That's another first for Portugal Yeah, he's being far-sighted 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

So it would be a bit like The Prince Regent Being the governor of New York or something 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 can say for him. Yes, that's true.

So now we have a very strange situation where Zhu has gone back to Lisbon, but Pedro is the top dog in Rio. And Pedro is an interesting character. 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, you know, 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 lecher, actually. He's a hit with the ladys. 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. 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 Kortesh, 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. 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 since we had all that dysentery on Gallipoli? Yeah. Great to have dysentery back on the show. It's very Gallipoli. He keeps him to get off his horse and relieve himself. He cuts a terrible 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?

To be honest, I think Brazil is a little bit more Wild West at this point. Okay. Than you're imagining. I think it's hard to wear gold braid and epaulettes 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. Yes, I suppose. 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 Kordesh 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 Cortesh 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. But actually, there are three separate eyewitness accounts that say that it did. Yeah. And it's exactly the kind of thing, a romantically inclined young prince in South America. It's exactly what he'd say.

Even if suffering horrendous stomach cramps. Yes. 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. 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 colour. And he is married to a Habsburg. So the yellow is the house of Austria. So the yellow in the Brazilian flag is Habsburg. Yeah. Wow. The green and yellow in the Brazilian flag are the colours of House of Bruganza and the House of Habsburg. You get the sense with Maximilian, the Habsburg Last Emperor of Mexico.

The Habsburgs are not at their best in the new world. No, not in 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 be British, all be British. So on the 20th of September, the Rio newspapers published the news that he has declared independence. 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 Regents 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 cortesh. He loves an adjective. That's the Portuguese Parliament. He does. They are no more than a gang of villainous anti-monicists and murderers who are holding

your majesty in the most ignominious captivity. Brazilian independence triumphs and will triumph or we will die defending it. It's quite Prince Harry to Charles III. Prince Harry, yes. Gosh, if he could go to Canada or something in the Claire. 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. I think you'd be quite suited to Canada.

Vince Harry? Yeah. No. Yeah. The Canadians are quite hardy people. Harry's fought in Afghanistan. The Canadians wouldn't do all that business with Elizabeth Arden cream, surely, when they got frostbite. Of course, they would.

No, they would. Canadians are both, they're kind of, you know, Mounties. They like kind of galloping around in the world. I'm just thinking about, 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 stuff. They're very woke.

Not all of them, though. The Prince Harry Ford in Afghanistan ticks one box and the woke stuff ticks another box. It feels to both. It goes to both Mark Carney and Puellyre for or something. A man who looks like a Tory MP from a casting agency. And all the truck drivers. Yes, the Alberta people.

The Alberta drivers. Alberta oilmen. I don't think Alberta or Allman surely have any time. No, sorry, I'm getting the model. The Alberta Orleman and Mark Carney. Right. He took both. Anyway, listen to this is irrelevant.

Well, it's great to have some Canada on the show anyway. Well, they are hosting the World Cup. 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 books 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. 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 elite. 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. 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 empress. 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 and Barros. 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 ten rather than 14. What's the standard of the lyrics?

Poor, I think really poor. I think actually Don Pedro comes out better than Everese. Fierreira de Vega Ibaros. Because some of the... I'll give you an example of the lyrics. The Auguste Royal Air, 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. 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. Exactly, exactly. For the next nine years, this is the sound of Brazilian freedom.

But bad news for fans of Don Pedro, the first. Or is not well in his Brazil. Because I said at the beginning how violence and unstable it is. Throughout the 1920s, there are a series of revolts. And there's a massive revolt in the northern province of Pernambuco. And the rebels there call for a separate. 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 Cis Platina, 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. the first winner of the World Cup, of course. Exactly, first winning the Royal 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, Domzhouout the 6th, dies in his palace outside Lisbon back in Portugal. And it's not clear who's going to succeed him.

Could Don Pedro succeed him and become king of both kingdoms? Become emperor and king again. Will somebody else in the family succeed him? Or Don Pedro's preferred solution, his own daughter. So who's called Maria? Will she succeed his father? 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 being 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. So on the night of the 11th of March, 1831, riots break out in the city of Rio. And this is an event known, you will. know, Tom. It's called the Knight of Bottles. I mean, of course, I do know that, but I'll tell you what always why bottles? People are throwing bottles. Okay, of course. It's pretty straightforward, to be honest. Right. So the Knights of Bottles unusually lasts for five days. The nights of bottles

usually lasts just one day. I think a knight usually lasts a knight, no? You're right. Yeah. I think the clue is usually in the name, but not in this case. It's different in the southern hemisphere and in the new world. So magical realist. It is. So, so. there are all these crowds fighting, liberals are shouting, long live the Constitution, 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 expac 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 lot of cronies, loads of riots, loads of protests. 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, you know, 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, the first emperor of Brazil, announces that he will abdicate in favour of his son, who is only five years old, and is of course also called Pedro and will become Dom Pedro the second. Yeah, a friend of the show. 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 the 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 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, 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. And of course, this isn't just a problem for blood-soaked conquistadors. it is true for the rest of us as well, which is where Lloyd's comes in. Their app helps you to see all your finances in one place so that you can feel clearer and more confident about what comes next. And rather like Cortez, you're managing the micro and the macro. So one moment, you might be managing day-to-day spending with budgeting insights using the app, or you might be getting guidance if you're thinking about starting a business. So whatever your next move looks like, you can bank on Lloyd's to help you make it with confidence.

Visit Lloydsbank.com. 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-toonsta Pedro the first So what are they now going to do about this anthem that he's left them, which is basically him of praised his virility and strength and wisdom and stuff? They can't use it. Because he's proved himself to be useless, hasn't he?

And the thing 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.

is already on the case. This is one of my favorite Brazilian composers of the 1820s, Francisco Manuel de Silva. Now, Francisco Manuel de Silva actually knew Don Pedro the first 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, Silver had started writing a celebratory hymn.

And it took him six weeks to do it. He premiered it at the Sao 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. Okay, that's ungrateful. 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. They were written by a liberal judge who was called Ovidio Sariva de Carvalio and Silva. And the general consensus among historians is that Ovidio Sariva's lyrics for this anthem are absolutely terrible. Oh, why? They're 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 limits. I don't know many lucophobic songs. So to give you a sample of these lyrics, the canons 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. This is obviously a reference to the sort of, I guess, the Reconquista and Portugal's kind of history of religious diversity. Spain famously expelled both the Moors and the Jews. So maybe it's a reference to the fact that Portugal was distinct from that. 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, Silver'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 on Pernambuco.

There's a slave revolt in Bayer in 1835. there's an unbelievably bloody rebellion in the northern state of Parra in the late 1830s in which a third of the population were killed, about 30,000 people. 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 the second.

Because why? I think they just think we want to show, you know, that... The state is functioning. Yeah, the state is functioning. A bit of braid. People love a bit of braid. Yeah. By this point, this anthem by Francisco Manuel de Silva, the one that he had written when

Don Pedro was kicked out, this is accepted as the sort of de facto national anthem. So they commission new lyrics for it. The new lyrics are just as bad as the previous lyrics. I know. 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 II the adventure of Brazil. That's mad. That's going to date even faster. I mean, what happens if he dies? Well, they decide he's rubbish and drive him into his sight. Exactly.

At this point, the authorities basically say, okay, forget. Just keep humming. Yeah, just keep humming. So keep playing this hymn by Francisco Manuel de 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, 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. 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. 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 the stay. Even to the stay, 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? He's called the Louis the 14th of the tropics. But that's not necessarily... A good thing.

A compliment. Yeah. I mean, Louis XIV isn't a very nice man. 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 Paster 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 Moreau Gottschalk. And Gottschalk, he came from New Orleans. His father was a Jewish emigrant from London, and his mother was a Creole from the future Dominican Republic, Santa Domingo. And Gottschalk was a child prodigy who used to play the piano in hotels in New Orleans.

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. 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. 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 is 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. 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. So he wrote a march that was dedicated to Pedro the second and a piano work called the Grand Triumphal Fantasy on the British.

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-hah 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 in politics and was used by the Democratic Labor Party in its TV ads in the 1980s. So this guy Got Schalk, 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 Trample Fantasy. You can look it up on YouTube and listen to it if that's the way you like to spend your time. Got Schalk himself came to a very sad end after he'd finished it. On the 24th of February 1869, he was playing the piano at a constant. concert in a Teatro lyrico fluminense in Rio.

He had just finished his own piece, which was unbelievably called Morty, death, when he collapsed. I can't believe you're laughing about this. 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. So that's a strange story. Anyway, back to Pedro the second. 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? Yeah, Louis-Philippe, some sort of great fruit salad bug. The whole series writes itself. It does. Okay. So people turn against him why the rich coffee planters were furious about the abolition of slavery. Liberal intellectuals had 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 modernisation. 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 because he's got a big beard

and then introducing another one. Mad, insane, exactly. Especially as Don Pedro II was basically the best leader of Brazil's ever had. Yeah. Don Pedro the second didn't have the will to fight. He went off into Paris. He died in Paris and 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 is genuinely running Brazil at this point.

They rip Don Pedro's name of all the streets and all the buildings. It's the classic story. They changed the image on the banknotes. So like Philip II in the Dutch Revolt. Exactly. In a Dutch National Anthem podcast. They also tweak the flag. They do all sorts of things.

But they keep the Habsburg stuff. Well, as we should see, they do. There's still the yellow, right? What colors are Brazil playing? 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 chosen a poem by a liberal writer. And they've all got massive names. This writer is called Jose Joachim de Campos,

the Kastor de Maudiro and Elbeke. And he's written the power. him? 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 me 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 Contestal. There is an ominous sign. Before the second round, a journalist asks this new president, Marshall Deidore, with his massive beard. What do you think of the entrance so far?

Deidore said, I prefer the old anthem. Oh, okay. So they have the final at the Teatro Lyrico Fluminense, the place where Gottschalk, the pianist, with his yellow fever. They have the final at this theatre. They pay the finalists. They pay them all twice.

Marshall Deodoro and his ministers are listening in the Royal Box. Deidoro 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. They've stuck with the old anthem, but they haven't got any lyrics for it still. Marshall Deodoro falls from power after a year, falling out with Congress. Is this because they're crossed with him for not choosing a new album? No, I don't think the anthem plays a massive part in that, actually, frankly. It'd be nice claim and it would make the episode better. Yeah, but it wouldn't be true. The National Anthem revolt.

A Marshall Deodoros fall, just a year after they've kicked out of Don Pedro II, sets the tone for what follows. So to quote the Brazilian writer Pedro Vasquez, in the next century, Brazil had 12. 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. The consequence of that is that it's very difficult to arrive to consensus for new lyrics for the national... Precisely. Precisely. Not their priority. No. Basically, there'll be a coup in another year and they'll want their own lyrics.

So there's no lyrics. Now, the problem for the government, government is people have started to make up their own lyrics. There are complaints flooding in all the time. A, people 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 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 Bertolt Brecht. 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. In 1909, they held yet another contest to write lyrics for the old anthem. And this is won by a man called Osorio Duke Estrada. He is the man who wrote the lyrics that exist today.

What does he like? This man who sets his stamp on Brazilian world. 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, 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. Yeah. When Don Pedro the second 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, not there? They do. People love a World Expo. They've got 14 countries are 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. I don't know. Maybe they are jealous. They've built some absolutely thrilling attractions.

So 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 of history festival.

Hampton Corp Hallas. Yeah, people who come into that are going to love our statistics tend. But three million people go to this expo in Rio. So that's even more than are going to the rest of History Festival at Hampton Court 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 duke Estrada.

They say, okay, we're just going to stop now. Stop changing the lyrics. we're going to buy them off you. They buy them off him for 5 million Rijs, 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 amount. No. I mean, you have to write another anthem. If you get what's the rest of the car. Yeah, to get the rest of the car. The very first radio broadcast in Brazilian history was the playing of this new anthem, well, it's 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 Christ the Redeemer stands today. And actually Christ the Redeemer, they began work on it this year, so the first foundations had been laid while the sound of the anthem is drifting across the city. So it's a great year for Brazilian identity, national identity. 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. So these are the lyrics you have today. Oh, beloved, idolized homeland. Hail, hail, adored land. Amongst a thousand others art thou, Brazil. O beloved homeland of the sons of this ground,

thou art a kind mother, beloved homeland, Brazil. I mean, they're like every other anthem. They're not great, are they? No, so, I mean, there are 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. They're slow 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 in 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. So it's kind of nice that Don Pedro is still baking there. A little nod. 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 blazeseth. Now, you might think the cross, this is Christian cross. It's not really. It's the southern cross. The word in Portuguese is cruzero. And this is this constellation that's only visible in the southern hemisphere. It was first described by a Portuguese astronomer, Zhao Farras, who had gone on the first voyage to Brazil in 1500. He set have an astrolabe on the beach to work out where they were using 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 and 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 great deal to Brazil. They had four different currencies in the 20th century called Cruzeiros. And there is, fittingly, as we're a World Cup series, there is a football team called Cruzeiro, founded in 1921 in Belor-Azont. And this is a team that produced two of the players from the 1970 World Cup winning team, Tostow and Piazza, and Gersigno, who scored in every round of the 1970 World Cup. He played a for Cruzeiro later on and Ronaldo, the original Ronaldo, if you remember him, Tom, with his gapy teeth.

Kind of bald. Yes, he played for Cruzeiro before he moved to PSV, I'd have. A little bit like Zach Polanski. Yeah, I can see the resemblance. Similar teeth. Yeah. Better at football than Zach Planozky. Yeah, much better.

Who doesn't strike me as a natural sportsman. He doesn't exude athletic prowess, does he? No. So near the end of the anthem, there's one of the, the reference, Brazil of eternal love, may the starry ensign which thou displayest be a symbol. And the starry end sign 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 was a Habsburg Tribune flag.

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 Habsburg. Yeah. Yeah, he would. So the green, as I said, the House of Bruganza, which ruled Portugal since 1422, the yellow diamond, Habsburg, 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 the astrolabe is also in the middle of the port. 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 Ording and Progressal. And this means order and progress. And this is a quotation

from a French writer, Auguste Comte. L'amour per principle and l' order for as the progress for bubue 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 Pelle and Coe in 1970, how they used football to launder their image. 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 we were talking before in previous episodes about how people would basically co-opt or appropriate anthems? Yeah. And to 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 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 singing the Brazilian national anthem.

But also, of course, very popular on the right. So when Jaya Bolsonaro, the, I have to say, very unlovely president of Brazil, sort of... Big chum of Trump's. Yeah, Trump adjacent to president of Brazil. When he lost his bid for re-election in 2022 and his supporters went berserk to the sort of maga-style uprising, and a lot of them were filmed seeing the national anthem while doing Nazi salutes. Oh dear. Which I think is 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 Jha, direct elections already, which was demanding free presidential elections. And they organized these huge rallies with hundreds of thousands of people. 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 paid for a team called Corinthians and 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 of getting 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 like how he worked with Adair, Falcao and Cerezo in the

midfield of 1982, Tom. I am the person to talk you through that. And his relationship with Plato. 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 Fafada Balang, 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 Fardo music. So this kind of husky kind of lament. Yeah. And she would go to these rallies for Fahdi's music. Adderbaling, and she would give this performance of the national anthem, the regime had banned anything but very, very formal interpretations of the anthem. 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 Starz Bang or Banner? And we were talking about Jimmy Hendricks and whatnot. Yeah. This 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. 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. 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 it. 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 of history, a relatively happy ending. Well, that's wonderful. And actually, in the 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, there will be quite a lot of rugby. Rugby, excellent. All right. So obviously, if you're a massive fan 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 Restist History Club, you can get that by joining us at the rest is history.com.

Thank you, Dominic. Thank you, everyone for listening. And let's say goodbye with the National Anthem of Brazil. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hi, don't know the rest of the world of democracy, Gigantia, giant in a country of democracy

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 Bournemon about the Tudors. I'll be talking to Katia Hoyer about Vimar 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. 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 Restis 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. So you have to head to the Restis History.com to sign up. And then you go to the members area once you've signed up

and you select a festival to get your tickets. We are really hoping to see as many of you there as possible in the sunshine, a Hampton court. Bye-bye. 150 years ago, they were hunting us down to kill us. and now they're hunting down immigrants to deport them. This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be, and how we got to this present moment.

Listen to First America wherever you get your podcasts.