PORTS OF SOUTHERN BRAZIL IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY: ATLANTIC TRADE, IMPERIAL CONTROL, AND REGIONAL RESISTANCE (1822-1852)

Gorbunov Igor Olegovich

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the role of southern Brazilian ports (the provinces of São Pedro do Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina) between 1822 and 1852—an era of the formation of the Brazilian Empire, Atlantic trade, and regional armed conflicts. The paper examines the ports of Rio Grande, Porto Alegre, Desterro (now Florianópolis), and Laguna as key logistics hubs that facilitated the export of agricultural products (dried meat – charque, leather, rice, and tobacco) and the import of industrial goods, as well as instruments of imperial control over the south of the country. Their participation in the major conflicts of the first half of the 19th century is traced: the Argentine-Brazilian War of 1825–28, the Farroupilha Revolution of 1835–45, the civil wars in the Rio de la Plata region, and the Platine War of 1851–52. Attention is also paid to how ports served as arenas for social resistance among local elites, gauchos, slaves, and migrants against the centralization of power, and how external powers (Britain and others) influenced Atlantic trade and politics in the region. The findings suggest the semi-peripheral status of southern Brazil in the global capitalist system of the 19th century and draw parallels between the struggle for strategic port hubs of that time and contemporary processes of the formation of a multipolar world.

Keywords:Southern Brazil; Atlantic ports; Farroupilha Revolution; Brazilian Empire; world-systems analysis; dependency theory; critical geopolitics; postcolonialism; Atlantic trade.