Luiz da França Pinto Garcez, a representative nineteenth-century Brazilian general, was born in Lisbon in 1799, the son of General Luiz Paulino de Oliveira Pinto da França. His family migrated to Brazil in 1808 with João VI and in September, 1811 at the age of twelve, young Luiz joined the Bahia light infantry legion as a cadet, a position open to him because of his father's military rank. After obtaining a transfer to the First Cavalry Regiment in Rio de Janeiro in 1813, he received permission to enroll at the Royal Military Academy. His studies were interrupted four years later when he joined the government force sent to crush the 1817 Pernambuco revolt. For his services in that campaign, he was awarded the rank of lieutenant and, upon return to the imperial capital in 1819, he learned of his appointment as adjutant to the Inspector General of Cavalry and light Infantry in Bahia with the rank of captain.

Popular disturbances can assume a wide variety of forms which account for the efforts of sociologists, psychologists, and historians to formulate crowd-classification systems. The classification and description of a popular disturbance, however, is not an end in itself, but is useful primarily as a tool to allow the historian to peer more closely at the society suffering conflict. The study of popular disturbances yields historical information on two levels: information about the disturbance itself; and, much more significantly, information about the social, political, and economic relationships evident among sectors of the population at the time of the disturbance. This paper, based principally on archival records only recently brought to light, proposes to examine the mining revolt of August 1766 in Real del Monte of New Spain on these two levels.

The history of African slave societies in the New World can be divided into three distinct phases—formation, maturity and decline. The third, the demise of the slave order, will be the focus of attention in the present discussion. There appear to be three general patterns to the decline of slave societies in the Americas. The first, exemplified by the United States and Haiti, came quickly, but at a time when the slave order was deeply entrenched, engendering profound resistance accompanied by a civil war. In the second, demonstrated by Cuba and Brazil, it occurred over the course of a few decades, involving a more varied combination of international pressure, slave resistance and a transformation of the labor regime utilizing both recently freed slaves and imported foreign workers. Of the third prototype, in which Mexico and Colombia represent cases in point, it was a seemingly undramatic, very slow process encompassing several generations, during which slavery appeared to wither away. This essay will examine the fate of slavery in Mexico, a topic which has been mentioned in various works, but has not been examined in detail. It is important not only for comparative purposes, but also for understanding the social history of late-colonial Mexico.

Jemmy Button was an Indian of Tierra del Fuego who inadvertently inspired four generations of nineteenth-century English missionaries to risk their earthly lives to save his eternal soul. These earnest evangelicals made five expeditions to Jemmy's South American homeland to make Christians of him and his countrymen. One of these ventures was an embarrassing fiasco, another ended in death by starvation, and a third led to a treacherous massacre.

This young Indian's unintended influence also touched evolutionary thought. Jemmy Button was a friend and companion to Charles Darwin on the famous voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Jemmy's versatile personality was intriguing to Darwin. He could be a naked Indian hunter when in Tierra del Fuego, and a foppish English gentleman when in the company of British naval officers. His ability to change like this inspired Darwin's earliest written reflections on the human capacity to progress from savagery to civilization.