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Men of Science and Standards: Introducing the Metric System in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2022

Anne G. Hanley Open the ORCID record for Anne G. Hanley [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

This article addresses the question of how standards were determined and disseminated in an era before the formation of agreed upon standards or the existence of governing bodies, by examining the case of nineteenth-century Brazil. It argues that the experience in Brazil was similar to that of other nations: individuals engaged in mathematical, scientific, engineering, and statistical organizations created networks of professional societies, intertwined with international diplomacy and domestic legislators, to promote the adoption of the metric system. It analyzes the process from idea to advocacy culminating in national implementation on the eve of the 1875 International Convention of the Meter, to which Brazil was signatory.

Keywords

Brazilnineteenth centurystandardizationmetric systemscientific exchange
Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 96 , Issue 1: Standards and the Global Economy , Spring 2022 , pp. 17 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2022

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References

1 Kenneth Alder, “A Revolution to Measure: The Political Economy of the Metric System in France,” in The Values of Precision, ed. M. Norton Wise (Princeton, 1995), 39–71; Cox, Edward Franklin, “The Metric System: A Quarter-Century of Acceptance (1851–1876),” Osiris 13 (1958): 358–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert P. Crease, World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement (New York, 2011); Heilbron, J. L., “The Politics of the Meter Stick,” American Journal of Physics 57, no. 988 (1989): 988–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Witold Kula, Measures and Men (Princeton, 1986); Roland Wenzlhuemer, “The History of Standardisation in Europe,” Europäische Geschichte Online (2010), http://www.ieg-ego.eu/wenzlhuemerr-2010-en.

2 Heilbron, “Politics,” 992.

3 Roberto Schwarz, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture (New York, 1992).

4 José Murilo de Carvalho, A construção da ordem: A elite política imperial/teatro de sombras; A política imperial, 6th ed. (Rio de Janeiro, 2011); Loveman, Mara, “Blinded like a State: The Revolt against Civil Registration in Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 1 (2007): 5–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roderick J. Barman, Brazil: Forging of a Nation, 1798–1852 (Stanford, 1994). Miriam Dolhnikoff argues that this apparent lack of capacity was deliberate, the result of a compact between the central government and provincial elites whereby provincial deputies gave support to the central government for its agenda, which in return granted the provinces autonomy in taxation, legislation, and political coercion. Dolhnikoff, O Pacto Imperial: origens do federalism no Brasil (São Paulo, 2005) and “Entre centro e a província: As elites e o poder legislativo no Brasil oitocentista,” Almanack braziliense 1 (2005): 80–92. Presumably, governing capacity could roll up from the local to the provincial to the nation-state. An important book by Hendrik Kraay, Days of National Festivity (Stanford, 2013), traces the consolidation of the nation-state through pageantry and celebration, a project that took six decades to accomplish.

5 Teresa Cribelli, Industrial Forests and Mechanical Marvels: Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (New York, 2016).

6 The riots took place from October 31, 1874, through February 1875. Horácio de Almeida, Brejo de Areia: memórias de um município (Rio de Janeiro, 1958); Barman, Roderick J., “The Brazilian Peasantry Reexamined: The Implications of the Quebra-Quilos Revolt, 1874–1875,” Hispanic American Historical Review 57, no. 3 (1977): 401–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kim Richardson, Quebra-Quilos and Peasant Resistance: Peasants, Religion, and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Lanham, MD, 2011); Maria Verónica Secreto, “(Des)Medidos: Quebra-Quilos e outras quebras nos sertões Nordestinos (1874–1875),” in Formas de resistência camponesa: visibilidade e diversidade de conflitos ao longo da história; Concepções de justiça e resistência nos Brasis, vol. 1, ed. Márcia Motta and Paulo Zarth (São Paulo, 2008), 219–40; Geraldo Irenêo Joffily, O Quebra Quilo: a revolta dos matutos contra os doutores, 1874 (Brasilia, 1977); Luciano Mendonça de Lima, “Quebra-Quilos: uma revolta popular na periferia do Império,” in Revoltas, motins, revoluções: homens livres pobres e libertos no Brasil do século XIX, ed. Monica Duarte Dantas (São Paulo, 2011), 449–83.

7 Kirsten Schultz, Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821 (New York, 2013).

8 The classic work on this is Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil and the Slave Trade Question (Cambridge, U.K., 1970). See also David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987); Jeffrey Needell, The Party of Order: The Conservatives, the State, and Slavery in the Brazilian Monarchy, 1831–1871 (Stanford, 2006); and Parron, Tâmis, “The British Empire and the Suppression of the Slave Trade to Brazil: A Global History Analysis,” Journal of World History 29, no. 1 (2018): 1–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Brazil, Coleção de Leis e Decretos 1824–1889, Law 2040, 28 Sept. 1871.

10 Loveman, “Blinded.” The registry was legislated in mid-1851, but when the time for implementation came, a series of violent uprisings caused its suspension in January 1852.

11 See note 6 for the extensive literature on the Quebra Quilos revolts that explores these motivations.

12 JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (Baltimore, 2019); Alder, “Revolution to Measure”; Crease, World in the Balance.

13 Heilbron, “Politics.” On measurement in the United States, see Crease, World in the Balance, 108–21; and Stephen Mihm, “State Standards: Weights, Measures, and Market Regulation in the Early American Republic” (paper presented at the 2015 BHC-EBHA meeting, Miami, 24–27 June 2015).

14 Crease, World in the Balance, 102.

15 Andrew J. Kirkendall, Class Mates: Male Student Culture and the Making of a Political Class in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Lincoln, NE, 2002). See also José Murilo de Carvalho, “Political Elites and State Building: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24, no. 3 (1982): 378–99.

16 Kirkendall, Class Mates, 5.

17 João Luciano Dias, História da Normalização Brasileira (São Paulo, 2011).

18 Ben Hur Mormêllo, “O ensino de matemática na Academia Real Militar do Rio de Janeiro, de 1811 a 1874” (master's thesis, Universdade Estadual de Campinas, 2010).

19 da Silva Telles, Pedro Carlos, “Evolucão histórica da Engenharia no Brasil,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 158, no. 397 (1997): 1107–16Google Scholar.

20 Mormêllo, “O ensino de matemática.”

21 Augusto Victorino Alves Sacramento Blake, Diccionario Bibliográfico Brazileiro, vol. 2 (Rio de Janeiro, 1893), 24–26. Oliveira later served as senator from Ceará, treasury minister, minister of the navy, and president of the Banco do Brazil. “Memoria sobre a adopção do systema metrico no Brasil e de uma circulação monetaria internacional,” Correio Mercantil, e Instructivo, Politico Universal, Edition A13, 13 Jan. 1860, 1.

22 Brazil, Leis e Decretos, Constituição Política do Império do Brasil, 1824, Title IV, Article 17. Former Spanish colonies adopted language regarding establishing a system of weights and measures from Spain's 1812 liberal Cadiz Constitution, which gives the legislature the power to “adopt the system of weights and measures it judges most convenient and just.” The Brazilian emperor, however, explicitly forbade his constitutional assembly to model the new constitution on that of Spain, as the Spanish constitution derived from the 1791 French one. This posed too great a threat to his power. Interestingly, neither the French constitution of 1791 nor the Portuguese constitution of 1822 includes language on weights and measures, but the 1826 Portuguese constitution, influenced by the 1824 Brazilian constitution, did. Spain, 1812 Constitucion de Cádiz; Paquette, Gabriel, “The Brazilian Origins of the 1826 Portuguese Constitution,” European History Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2011): 444–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Latin American constitutions, see Political Database of the Americas, Georgetown University, https://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/constudies.html. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.

23 Francisco Cordeiro da Silva Torres, Cândido Baptista de Oliveira, and Ignacio Ratton, Relatorio sobre o Melhoramento do Systema de Pezos e Medidas e Monetario (Rio de Janeiro, 1834), 5.

24 André Luiz Alípio de Andrade, “Variações sobre um tema: a Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indústria Nacional e o debate sobre o fim do tráfico de escravos (1845–1850)” (master's thesis, Economics Institute, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2002), 5.

25 Patrícia Regina Corrêa Barreto, “Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indústria Nacional: oficina de homens,” paper presented at ANPUH 13th Simpósio Nacional de História (2008); Andrade, “Variações,” 7; Cribelli, Industrial Forests; Domingues, Heloisa Maria Bertol, “A idéia de progresso no processo de institucinalização nacional das ciências no Brasil: a sociedade auxiliadora da indústria nacional,” Asclepio 48, no. 2 (1996): 149–62Google Scholar.

26 Leandro Miranda Malavota, “A Sociedade Auxiliadora da Indústria Nacional e as patentes de invenção: tecnologia e propriedade no Império do Brasil,” Revista Maracanan 23 (Jan.–Apr. 2020): 14.

27 Cribelli, Industrial Forests, 213.

28 Cribelli, 202–13.

29 Barreto, “Sociedade Auxiliadora.”

30 da Silva, Cesar Agenor Fernandes and de Moura Penteado, David Francisco, “O perfil dos redatores do periódico ‘O Auxiliador da Indústria Nacional’ (1833–1896),” Revista Diálogos Mediterrânicos 12 (2017): 132–53Google Scholar.

31 Manoel Luis Lima Salgado Guimarães, “Nação e Civilização nos Trópicos: o Instituto Histórico Geográfico Brasileiro e o projeto de uma história nacional,” Revista Estudos Históricos 1, no. 1 (1988): 5–27.

32 Ferreira, Lucio Menezes, “Vestígios de civilização: o Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro e a construção da arqueologia imperial (1838–1870),” Revista de História Regional 4, no. 1 (2007): 11Google Scholar.

33 Almanak administrativo, mercantil e industrial do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, 1865), 393.

34 The first statistical conference was in Brussels in 1853, followed by conferences in Paris in 1855 and Vienna in 1857. The London conference was the fourth.

35 “Introduction,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 1, no. 1 (1838): 1.

36 “International Statistical Congress, 1860 . . . Foreign Official Delegates,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 23, no. 3 (1860): 384–86.

37 Brazil, Ministério da Agricultura, Relatório de 1862, vol. 3, 13.

38 Rafael Winter Ribeiro, “A construção da seca como problema: administração pública e representações da natureza durante a seca de 1877–1879 no Ceará,” in Gestar e gerir: estudos para uma antropologia da administração pública no Brasil, ed. Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima (Rio de Janeiro, 2002). More than these four societies were at work; these are the four directly engaged in promoting the metric system.

39 This was a point of pride in the preambles of these journals. Revista Brazileira: Jornal de Sciencias, Lettras e Artes, ed. Cândido Baptista de Oliveira, vol. 1 (Rio de Janeiro, 1857). Oliveira, in his capacity as editor of the newly founded journal, wrote, “Aside from purely speculative sciences, or from fashionable literary productions, the Revista will regularly publish any knowledge of practical utility, especially the comparative study of important historical facts of any order, national and foreign; and of economic, industrial, and financial materials with particular application to Brazil” (pp. ix–x).

40 “Instructions for the Scientific Commission Charged with Exploring the Interior of Some Lesser Known Provinces of Brazil,” Revista Brazileira 1 (1857): 241–79. The instructions were signed by Luiz Pedreira do Couto Ferraz, Visconde do Bom Retiro, Minister of the Interior who later became president of the IHGB.

41 Brazil, Agricultura, Relatório de 1860, Annex E, “Parecer sobre um novo systema de pesos e medidas,” 24 May 1860, E0–E4.

42 Biographies were compiled by the author from many sources, including Augusto Victorino Alves Sacramento Blake, Diccionario Bibliographico Brazileiro, vols. 1–7 (Rio de Janeiro, 1893–1902); lists and biographical information published in the Almanak administrativo, various years; de Mendonça Figueirôa, Silvia Fernanda, “Ciência e tecnologia no Brasil Imperial Guilherme Schüch, Barão de Capanema (1824–1908),” Varia Historia 21, no. 34 (2005): 437–55Google Scholar; “Giácomo Raja Gabaglia,” IHGB website, accessed 8 August 2021, https://ihgb.org.br/perfil/userprofile/GRGabaglia.html; Revista Trimestral do Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro, vol. 57 (Rio de Janeiro, 1894); and Ribeiro, “A construção da seca.”

43 Agricultura, Relatório de 1860, Annex E,“Parecer,” E1.

44 Crease, World in the Balance, 126–28.

45 Agricultura, Relatório de 1860, E1.

46 Sebastião Francisco de Mendo Trigozo, Memória sobre os pesos e medidas portuguesas e sobre a introdução do sistema métrico decimal (Lisbon, 1820), 3–8. Arquivo Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (ANRJ).

47 Trigozo, Memória, 4. ANRJ.

48 Agricultura, Relatório de 1860, E1.

49 Agricultura, Relatório de 1860, E3.

50 Agricultura, Relatório de 1860, E3.

51 Crease, World in the Balance, 102.

52 Leis e Decretos, Decree no. 1067, 28 July 1860, and subsequent decrees shifted some portfolio responsibilities from Empire and Justice to the newly formed ministry. Louse Gabler, A Secretaria de Estado dos Negócios da Agricultura, Comércio e Obras Públicas e a modernização do Império (Rio de Janeiro, 2012), 10.

53 Brazil, Anais do Senado, Session of 15 July 1861, 106.

54 As proposed in Portugal, units would maintain their customary names but correspond to metric weights and measures. Publicador Maranhense, Edition 283, 14 May 1845, 3; Diario de Pernambuco, Edition 82, 14 Apr. 1845, 1: “Article 1. The basis of the Portuguese metric system shall be the one-millionth part of the quarter of the meridian, calculated between the parallels of Dunkirk and Barcelona, and shall be denominated vara.”

55 Diario do Rio de Janeiro, Edition 07575, 16 Aug. 1847, 2.

56 Publicador Maranhense, Edition 658, 18 May 1848, 3; and Edition 1301, 24 Aug. 1852, 1.

57 Diario de Pernambuco, Edition 25, 31 Jan. 1853, 1; Correio Mercantil (RJ), Edition 362, 29 Dec. 1852, 4; Jornal do Commercio (RJ), Edition 158, 9 June 1852, 2; and Edition 203, 24 July 1854, 5.

58 Jornal do Commercio (RJ), Edition 320, 21 Nov. 1855,9.

59 Correio Mercantil, e Instructivo, Politico Universal (RJ), Edition A13, 13 Jan. 1860, 1.

60 Anais do Senado, Livro 2, 15 July 1861, 106.

61 Schwarz, Misplaced Ideas, 28, 23.

62 Anais do Senado, Livro 2, 26 July 1861, 148.

63 Anais, Livro 2, 150.

64 Anais, Livro 2, 154.

65 Anais, Livro 2, 162, 176.

66 Indeed, the impetus to standardize the materials, measurements, and even time in Europe and North America had derived from the spread of the railroad. Yates and Murphy, Engineering Rules, 19.

67 Anais do Senado, Livro 2, 26 July 1861, 154. The Minister of Agriculture seems to refer, mistakenly, to Alagoas as a city. Alagoas is the state of which Maceió is the capital. Here is the original quote: “Um alqueire, por exemplo, de Maceió é muito mais pequeno do que o das Alagôas, e tres ou quatro horas bastão para se ir de uma a outra cidade.” The mistake aside, the point stands; neighboring cities had vastly different systems of measurement.

68 Anais do Senado, Livro 3, 6 Aug.1861, 36.

69 Anais, Appendix, 8 Aug. 1861, 1–24.

70 Anais do Parlamento Brasileiro, Camara dos Deputados, vol. 1, 16–31 May 1862, 23–27.

71 Richard Graham, Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Stanford, 1990); Judy Bieber, Power, Patronage, and Political Violence: State Building on a Brazilian Frontier, 1822–1889 (Lincoln, NE, 1999); Anne G. Hanley, The Public Good and the Brazilian State: Municipal Finance and Public Services in São Paulo, 1822–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018).

72 Leis e Decretos, Law 1157, of June 26, 1862, “establishes the substitution in all the Empire of the system of weights and measures by the French metric system as regards linear measures of surface, capacity, and weight. Fixes a term of 10 years for the substitution of the system in use and requires classes in the metric system in all of school arithmetic curricula.”

73 Alder, “Revolution to Measure,” 59.

74 Alder, 39–71.

75 Diario de Pernambuco, Edition 173, 30 July 1861, 2.

76 Agricultura, Relatório de 1863, 11–12.

77 “Cartas de presidentes de provincias. Acuso de recebimento de ordem de execucao do sistema métrico,” 23 May 1865. ANRJ-GIFI-4I-25.

78 Epifanio Candido de Souza Pitanga in 1866, Gabaglia in 1867, and Capanema in 1869. Pitanga studied at the military academy and was a member of the Paris Physics Society, the Sociedade Auxiliadora, and the IHGB and officer of the Instituto Politécnico.

79 United States, National Bureau of Standards, Department of Commerce, Weights and Measures, vols. 8 and 9; Bureau of Standards, Ninth Annual Conference of Representatives from Various States held at the Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC, 26–29 May 1914 (Washington, DC, 1915).

80 Circulars regarding the steps taken to implement the law that decrees the substitution of the system of weights and measures. , Docs. 330, 332–34 (3 May 1872) and 453 (10 June 1872), GIFI-5D-199, ANRJ.

81 Apparently acting in the capacity of private entrepreneur at the time, Caiado was appointed provincial president of Goiás a decade later. On the contract, see “Contrato entre autoridades para o transporte de pesos e medidas,” May 1872, GIFI-4B-16, ANRJ. On Caiado, see Adrianna Setemy, “Caiado, Antônio José,” in Dicionário Histórico-Biográfico Brasileiro, http://cpdoc.fgv.br/sites/default/files/verbetes/primeira-republica/CAIADO,%20Antonio%20Jos%C3%A9.pdf.

82 Circulars regarding, Docs. 398 (27 May 1872), 405–8 (29 May 1872), and 455–62 (10 June 1872), ANRJ.

83 Agricultura, Relatório de 1871, 55–56. Annex T contains the 1871 law that creates the funding to order and import the weights and measures. It details what types of patterns a “set” consists of and specifies three different classes: first, second, and third, in decreasing levels of complexity and material. First-class sets included more than thirty items of varying weights and capacity; second-class sets included sixteen items; and third-class sets included eleven items. The total budget paid for 10 first-class sets, 59 second-class sets, and 509 third-class sets, presumably according to the level of commercial sophistication in the municipalities that were to receive them. This sums to 578 municipalities. We know from the 1872 census that 643 were recorded. It is possible that the government was not sure of the exact count in 1871 before the census was carried out, or that the other 65 municipalities were too small to warrant their own set or were close to another and planned to share.

84 Leis e Decretos, Decree no. 5089, 18 Sept. 1872.

85 Agricultura, Relatório de 1872, 45–46.

86 Agricultura, Relatório de 1872, Annex H.

87 Agricultura, Relatório de 1874, 46.

88 Agricultura, Relatório de 1874, Annex 6, “Systema Metrico.”

89 Agricultura, Relatório de 1874, 20.

90 M. Ribeiro de Almeida, Compendio do Sistema métrico decimal de pesos e medidas para o uso de escolas primárias (Rio de Janeiro, 1889), BNRJ – I – 206, 4, 25, 3, Biblioteca Nacional; “Aparelho Escolar Múltiplo destinado a facilitar o ensino nas escolas primárias,” 11 May 1885, BR AN RIO PI.0.0.147, ANRJ.

91 “Aparelho Verificador Kilogramétrico para mostrar o peso da carga continda numa carroça ou carro,” 7 Feb. 1887, BR AN RIO PI.0.0.8456, ANRJ; “Relatorio e solicitacao de privilegio sobre aparelho de medicao de carga,” 20 Mar. 1894, BR AN RIO PI.0.0.1384, ANRJ.

92 Agricultura, Relatório de 1874, 45.

93 Agricultura, Relatório de 1881, 59–60; Relatório de 1882, 140.

94 Agricultura, Relatório de 1883, 43–44. Other Latin American signatories included Peru, Venezuela, and Argentina.

95 Documents Diplomatiques de La Conférence du Metre (Paris, 1875). Brazil's representative and signatory, Marcos Antonio d'Araujo, Visconde D’ Itajubá, was a member of the IHGB.