Miqueias Mugge, Jeremy Adelman and Lilia M. Schwarcz | Empire's Fulcrum: Militarization and Inequality on the Brazilian Borderlands

"Empire’s Fulcrum: National Guards, Militarization, and Inequality on the Brazilian Borderlands" unearths Brazil’s long history of structural inequality through the National Guard, a civil-military institution created in 1831. The book reveals how military service and local command congealed racial and ethnic hierarchies, secured economic domination, and contained secessionist threats, often projecting influence beyond Brazil's borders. Combining archival reconstruction with comparative analysis, Empire’s Fulcrum illuminates how public violence shaped property relations and local hierarchies. It reframes state formation, showing how everyday violence institutionalized inequality across race and region, and traces how new elites colonized the weapons of the state to build a new social order.

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Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies

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