“Beneath a Rich Blaze of Golden Sunlight”: The Travels of Archduke Maximilian through Brazil, 1860

Abstract

In early 1860, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria arrived in Bahia on a short, but ultimately illuminating, visit to his cousin, Brazilian Emperor Pedro II. Published posthumously in English as Recollections of My Life (1868), this underused narrative recounts just eight days of a two-month journey. Despite the brevity of the trip, it nevertheless provides an insightful and oftentimes unexpected perspective, especially for a European aristocrat. Offering a detailed commentary on everything from science to slavery, food to fashion, the account also brings to light a colonial discourse rooted in Eurocentric notions of culture and race. Although repeating the well-worn verbiage common to those traveling in nineteenth century Brazil, this soon-to-be emperor of Mexico underscores the importance of individual agency in travel accounts. More than a simple travelogue or an “imaginative” construct, this essay will reveal how the travel experience itself can have a real-world impact on future events.

Vers le début de l’année 1860, l’Archiduc Ferdinand Maximilian d’Autriche est arrivé à Bahia pour une visite courte mais en fin de compte éclairante à son cousin, l’Empereur Pedro II du Brésil. Publié à titre posthume Recollections of My Life (1868), ce récit apparemment peu connu raconte seulement huit jours d’un voyage de deux mois. En dépit de la brièveté du voyage, le récit fournit néanmoins une perspective perspicace et souvent inattendue, surtout chez un aristocrate européen. Le récit nous donne un commentaire détaillé sur tout—la science et l’esclavage, la cuisine et la mode—mais aussi nous révèle un discours colonial basé sur les idées eurocentriques en ce qui concerne la culture et la race. Quoique l’Archiduc répète les lieux communs rebattus partagés par tous ceux qui voyageaient au Brésil au 19^ème siècle, ce futur empereur du Mexique souligne l’importance des actes et choix individuels dans les récits de voyage. Plus qu’un simple compte rendu de voyage ou une construction « imaginative », cet essai montrera comment l’expérience de voyage elle-même peut avoir un impact sur les actions et événements ultérieurs dans le monde réel.

A principios de 1860, el archiduque Fernando Maximiliano de Austria llegó a Bahía en una breve, pero finalmente iluminadora, visita a su primo, el emperador brasileño Pedro II. Publicada póstumamente en inglés como Recollections of My Life (1868), esta infrautilizada narración cuenta solo ocho días de un viaje de dos meses. A pesar de la brevedad del viaje, proporciona una perspectiva perspicaz y a menudo inesperada, especialmente viniendo de un aristócrata europeo. El relato ofrece un comentario detallado sobre todo, desde la ciencia hasta la esclavitud, de la comida a la moda, y saca a la luz un discurso colonial arraigado en las nociones eurocéntricas de cultura y raza. Aunque repite la verborrea común a los viajeros del Brasil decimonónico, el futuro emperador de México subraya la importancia de la acción individual en los relatos de viajes. Más que un simple cuaderno de viaje o una construcción “imaginativa”, este ensayo revelará cómo la propia experiencia viajera puede tener un impacto real sobre acciones y eventos futuros.

KEYWORDS:

• Archduke Maximilian
• Brazil
• travel writing
• Latin America
• Pedro II

MOTS CLÉS:

• l’Archiduc Maximilian
• le Brésil
• les récits de voyage
• l’Amérique Latine
• Pedro II

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Archiduque Maximiliano
• Brasil
• literatura de viajes
• Iberoamérica
• Pedro II

Notes

¹ Maximilian, Recollections of My Life by Maximilian I. Emperor of Mexico (London: Richard Bentley, 1868), vol. 3, p. 97.

² Maximilian felt “a due apportionment of time” indispensable when traveling. On a three-day stay in Rome, Maximilian visited the Coliseum, St. Peter’s, and the Vatican three times each, all the churches, museums, and monuments, “visited the holy Father twice, and received the Holy Communion from his hands; accompanied him twice to mass, and breakfasted with him afterward; attended a long high mass in the Sistine Chapel, and also went to several large dinner-parties, and found time to pay and receive a multitude of official visits,” Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 295–6.

³ Duncker und Humblot published the German edition in Leipzig under the claimed editorship of poet Franz Josef von Münch-Bellinghausen (pseudonym Friedrich Halm), see Martin Clemens Weber, Das Italienbild von Erzherzog Ferdinand Maximilian (Diplomarbeit, Universität Wien, 2008), p. 148. A French translation soon followed along with a British, Italian, and Mexican edition.

⁴ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 1, pp. iii–v. A reviewer for the Examiner (8 August 1868, p. 501) praised Maximilian as a “lively writer,” while the Pall Mall Gazette (20 July 1868, pp. 9–10) noted the work’s political value regarding Brazil and slavery. One contributor to Notes and Queries (6 June 1868, p. 535), however, would question whether Maximilian had written the book since it contained “unkindly, ungenerous thoughts; coarse, ungentlemanly language, passages most offensive to his nearest relatives and downright misstatements.”

⁵ The sketches included Italien [1854], Spanien [1855], Sizilien. Lissabon Madeira [1856], Ein Stück Albanien, Galloafrica [1856], Ueber die Linie [1861], Bahia [1861], and Mato Virgem [1864]. A later volume not included, Mein erster Ausflug. Wanderungen in Griechenland [1868], covered his travels through Greece in 1856. While these vignettes made up the basis for Recollections, some negative comments about individuals and nations would be edited out, see Ingrid García Wistädt, “Los viajes de Maximiliano de Austria a España y Brasil: el largo camino hacia el imperio mexicano,” Revista de Filología Alemana 24 (2016), p. 38.

⁶ Bozner Zeitung, 21 September 1859.

⁷ See, for example, Natalia Fontes de Oliveira, “Three traveling women writers: Cross-cultural perspectives of Brazil, Patagonia, and the U.S., 1859–79” (PhD diss., Purdue University, 2015). Ángel T. Tuninetti, Nuevas Tierras Con Viejos Ojos: Viajeros Españoles Y Latinoamericanos En Sudamérica, Siglos XVIII Y XIX (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2001).

⁸ Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, eds. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 9.

⁹ The preface to the French edition would note “a mind keenly alive to all that was noble and beautiful, a poetical imagination, dreamy, and essentially romantic,” Souvenirs de ma vie: Mémoires de Maximilien, trans. Jules Gaillard (Paris: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven, et Cie, 1868). On the influence of German Romanticism on Maximilian’s imperial ambitions, see Johann Georg Lughofer, “Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg’s Literary Work in the Light of his Later Assumption of the Throne in Mexico,” Austrian Studies 20 (2012), pp. 75–95.

¹⁰ In 1858, Emperor Franz Josef’s son, Rudolf, would move ahead of Maximilian in line for the throne.

¹¹ See Robert H. Duncan, “Maximilian and the Construction of the Liberal State, 1863–1866,” in The Divine Charter: Constitutionalism and Liberalism in Nineteenth-century Mexico, ed. Jaime Rodríguez O. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), pp. 133–66.

¹² Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 1, p. 256.

¹³ Maximilian’s aunt, Archduchess Maria Leopoldine, would be the first Habsburg to enter the tropics when she arrived in Brazil to marry Crown Prince and later Emperor Pedro I in 1817.

¹⁴ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 105.

¹⁵ Nancy Leys Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature (New York: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 11.

¹⁶ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 106–7.

¹⁷ Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, eds. Hulme and Youngs, p. 9. Edward W. Said would go even further with the notion of “textual attitude” where “the book (or text) acquires a greater authority, and use, even than the actuality it describes,” in Orientalism: Western Concepts of the Orient (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 93.

¹⁸ The “gaze” was not passive, but a reconstruction of events, people, and landscapes in line with the observer’s point of view, see Cerue K. Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt - Triangular Perceptions and the Colonial Gaze in Nineteenth-Century German Travel Narratives” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 2008), p. 148.

¹⁹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 160–1. Under Maximilian, the Austrian navy had converted to steam, Lughofer, “Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg’s Literary Work,” p. 76.

²⁰ For a discussion of Wissenscraft as it related to Brazil, see Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” pp. 106–16.

²¹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 207.

²² See, for example, Gilles Boëtsch, “Science, Scientists, and the Colonies (1870–1914)” in Colonial Culture in France since the Revolution, ed. Pascal Blanchard (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), pp. 98–105; Pascal Riviale, “Europe Rediscovers Latin America: Collecting Artifacts and Views in the First Decades of the Nineteenth Century,” in Collecting across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the early Atlantic World, eds. Daniela Bleichmar and Peter Mancall (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), pp. 254–68. In 1817, Austria sent the first authorized scientific expedition to Brazil which brought back over 150,000 items as well as international recognition, see Christa Riedl-Dorn, “Austrian explorers in Latin America in the nineteenth century,” in Transatlantic relations: Austria and Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries, eds. Klaus Eisterer and Günter Bischof (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2006), pp. 61, 64. Michelle Medeiros, “Crossing boundaries into a world of scientific discoveries: Maria Graham in nineteenth-century Brazil,” Studies in Travel Writing 16:3 (2012), p. 268.

²³ Humboldt toured the hemisphere from 1799 to 1804, writing an account that filled some 30 volumes. Debate exists over whether Humboldt actually crossed into Brazil, for a discussion, see Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” pp. 118–22.

²⁴ Neither de Pauw nor Buffon stepped foot in the hemisphere, Ottmar Ette, “‘Not just brought about by chance’: reflections on globalisation in Cornelius de Pauw and Alexander von Humboldt,” Studies in Travel Writing 15:1 (2011), pp. 3–25.

²⁵ Neil L. Whitehead, “South America/Amazonia: the forest of marvels,” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writings, eds. Hulme and Youngs, p. 123.

²⁶ Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, p. 17.

²⁷ See Walter Sauer, “Habsburg Colonial: Austria-Hungary’s Role in European Overseas Expansion Reconsidered,” Austrian Studies 20 (2012), pp. 5–23.

²⁸ Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).

²⁹ Sauer, “Habsburg Colonial,” p. 14.

³⁰ Maximilian could not sail with the Novara due to his posting in Lombardy-Venetia. Dr. Karl Scherzer, Circumnavigation of the Globe by the Austria Frigate Novara, in the Years 1857, 1858, & 1859 (London: Saunders, Otley, and Co., 1861), pp. vii–x.

³¹ Scherzer, Circumnavigation of the Globe, pp. xlix-l.

³² As Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” points out, “in Brazil, they became Germans rather than being Bavarians, Silesians, or Prussians, as opposed to Brazilians,” pp. 197, 272, 277.

³³ Beer seemed the only thing that all Germans in Brazil could agree: “beer finds its way even into the forest; indeed, one may say that, wherever German lips are to be found, thither extends the empire of the mighty Gambrinus,” Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 110, 285, 289–90, 336.

³⁴ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 286.

³⁵ Zantop, Colonial Fantasies, p. 7.

³⁶ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 308–10, 366–7.

³⁷ Gabi R. Kathöfer, “Travel Writing, Emigration Laws, and Racial Whitening in Nineteenth Century German-Brazilian History,” in Not so innocent abroad: the politics of travel and travel writing, eds. Ulrike Brisson and Bernard Schweizer (New Castle, DE: Cambridge Scholars, 2009), p. 136. Travelers like German doctor, Robert Christian Avé-Lallemant denounced the treatment of these German emigres, see Reise durch Nord-Brasilien in Jahre 1859 (Leipzig: F.A. Brodhaus, 1860), pp. 8–9.

³⁸ Riedl-Dorn, “Austrian explorers,” in Transatlantic relations, eds. Eisterer and Bischof, p. 76.

³⁹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 200. As fleet commander, Maximilian would require basic science training for all personnel and gave orders to collect objects of interest, Riedl-Dorn, “Austrian explorers,” in Transatlantic relations, eds. Eisterer and Bischof, p. 73.

⁴⁰ Rohan Deb Roy, “Science Still Bears the Fingerprints of Colonialism,” Smithsonianmag.com, 9 April 2018, accessed 1 August 2019, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-bears-fingerprints-colonialism-180968709.

⁴¹ Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Travel Writing and ethnography,” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, eds. Hulme and Youngs, p. 250.

⁴² See Jennifer Hayward, “Latin America,” in The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Carl Thompson (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 361–71.

⁴³ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 187.

⁴⁴ Stepan, Picturing Tropical Nature, p. 34.

⁴⁵ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 187–8, 233, 380.

⁴⁶ Maximilian was an honorary member of the Academy of Science, Riedl-Dorn, “Austrian explorers,” in Transatlantic relations, eds. Eisterer and Bischof, pp. 67, 72, 76.

⁴⁷ Sauer, “Habsburg Colonial,” p. 8. When war broke out with Mexico in 1846, U.S. officials met with the American Fanny Calderón de la Barca whose travel account, Life in Mexico (1843), was seen as having tactical value, see Miguel A. Cabañas, “North of Eden: Romance and Conquest in Fanny Calderón de la Barca’s Life in Mexico,” Studies in Travel Writing 9:1 (2005), pp. 4–5.

⁴⁸ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 107.

⁴⁹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 108, 179, 224.

⁵⁰ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 258, 335.

⁵¹ However, he was ultimately unsuccessful in acquiring a tapir and an alligator for the menagerie at Schönbrunn, Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 269, 279, 334, 380–1.

⁵² Olivia Biasin Dias, “Viajantes na Bahia oitocentista: motivações e impressões acerca dos serviços de hospedagem,” Turismo Visão e Ação 8:3 (2006), p. 425.

⁵³ See Noah C. Elkin, “Promoting a New Brazil: National Expositions and Images of Modernity, 1861–1922” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 1999).

⁵⁴ These subsidies did not always turn out as expected, see Wilma Peres Costa, “European Travelers and the Writing of the Brazilian Nation,” in Nationalism in the New World, eds. Don H. Doyle and Marco Antonio Pamplona (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2006), pp. 208–9; Kathöfer, “Travel Writing,” in Not so innocent abroad, eds. Brisson and Schweizer, p. 144.

⁵⁵ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 120, 191; Lughofer, “Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg’s Literary Work,” p. 84.

⁵⁶ Fanny Calderón de la Barca would see the New World as “Paradise regained,” see Cabañas, “North of Eden,” p. 13; Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 148.

⁵⁷ Austrian mining engineers Johann Carl Hocheder and Virgil von Helmreichen would explore Brazil for its mineral wealth in the 1830s and 1840s, see Riedl-Dorn, “Austrian explorers,” in Transatlantic relations, eds. Eisterer and Bischof, pp. 66–70.

⁵⁸ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 97; Hulme and Youngs, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, eds. Hulme and Youngs, p. 5.

⁵⁹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 14. As Darwin would write, “as the force of impressions generally depends on preconceived ideas, I may add, that mine were taken from the vivid descriptions in the Personal Narrative of Humboldt, which far exceed in merit anything else which I have read,” in The Voyage of the Beagle (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1909), pp. 505–6. Maximilian’s extensive library at Miramar held several thousand volumes with eleven books either written by or about Humboldt and some two dozen on Brazil, see Museo storico del Castello di Miramare Biblioteca, Katalog der Bibliothek von Miramar: Abgeschlossen im Juli 1863 (Vienna: Aus der kaiserlich -königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1863).

⁶⁰ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 299.

⁶¹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 111, 141, 144. Heinrich Wawra published this botanical record as Botanische Ergebnisse der Reise Seiner Majestät des Kaisers von Mexico Maximilian I. nach Brasilien (1859–1860) (Wien: Karl Gerold und Sohn, 1866). Three plants would be named after Maximilian including the orchid, Oncidium imperatoris maximiliani.

⁶² Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 139, 184. Elizabeth Agassiz would likewise note how Brazilians lacked knowledge when it came to these things, see Fontes de Oliveira, “Three traveling women writers,” p. 165. Brazil, in fact, began staging fairs in order to bring local nomenclature more in line with standard scientific terminology, see Elkin, “Promoting a New Brazil,” p. 15.

⁶³ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 395; Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008), p. 148.

⁶⁴ He would note that unlike the date palm, the coconut palm was “the untrained representative of the uncultivated hemisphere,” Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 109, 147, 192–3, 258.

⁶⁵ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 306.

⁶⁶ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 304.

⁶⁷ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 275, 339.

⁶⁸ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 275, 393, 398.

⁶⁹ As Mary Louise Pratt defines it, a contact zone is “the space of imperial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other,” Imperial Eyes, p. 8.

⁷⁰ Maximilian spoke French, Italian, English, Hungarian, and Czech. Thus, he became greatly annoyed when no one at a hotel in a large commercial town “spoke either French, English, German, or Italian,” Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 125.

⁷¹ In the 300 pages, Maximilian would use the term “black” or “negro” some 220 times and “slave” or “slavery” 169 times more—almost double the times that he used the word “Brazil” or “Brazilian.”

⁷² See Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” pp. 229–38.

⁷³ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 130, 139, 166, 233.

⁷⁴ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 115.

⁷⁵ See Ina von Binzer, Leid und freud einer Erzieherin in Brasilien (Berlin: Richard Eckstein Nachfolger, 1887); Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” p. 231.

⁷⁶ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 142, 309.

⁷⁷ More often, mulatos had terms like “dirty” or “ugly” attached, Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 2, p. 135; vol. 3, pp. 105, 234.

⁷⁸ Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” p. 240.

⁷⁹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 313, 317. In his library, Maximilian had a collection of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels including The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826), and The Prairie (1827). He also had Cooper’s travelogue, Recollections of Europe (1837).

⁸⁰ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 332, 391.

⁸¹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 153.

⁸² Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 112, 211, 247.

⁸³ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 112.

⁸⁴ Ina von Binzer would make a similar comment some twenty years later, Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” p. 232.

⁸⁵ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 201–3.

⁸⁶ See the Pall Mall Gazette, 1 July to 8 July 1868.

⁸⁷ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 236–7, 255.

⁸⁸ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 237, 359, 370. He did feel that “there might be hope for the future; for the blacks in Liberia are intelligent people,” p. 357.

⁸⁹ Maximilian would describe Steiger as “one of those men whom Cooper has drawn so well,” Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 325, 356–9.

⁹⁰ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 357. Agassiz similarly questioned what slaves would do with freedom and that slavery has worse effects on the owners, Fontes de Oliveira, “Three traveling women writers,” p. 173.

⁹¹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 165, 361.

⁹² Humboldt learned about slavery in Cuba by talking to slave-owning elites without speaking to any slaves, see Michael Zeuske, “Alexander von Humboldt in Cuba, 1800/01 and 1804: traces of an Enigma,” Studies in Travel Writing 15:4 (2011), pp. 347–58.

⁹³ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 277–9.

⁹⁴ Diggs points out that Dr. Heinrich von Langsdorff (1803–1807) expressed a similar “measure of guilt” over enjoying the benefits of slavery, marking “one of the few overt moments of self reflections in travel accounts of Brazil,” “Brazil after Humboldt,” p. 238.

⁹⁵ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 218–20. Some have argued that “hospitality” in travel accounts served to downplay imperialism by showing a welcoming world, Fontes de Oliveira, “Three traveling women writers,” p. 160.

⁹⁶ When German educator, Ina von Binzer, had a similar encounter with a leprous slave, she pitied him partly due to his race, Binzer, Leid und freud einer Erzieherin, p. 189.

⁹⁷ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 257.

⁹⁸ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 153, 311–2.

⁹⁹ To avoid punishment, slaves hid their African “spirits” (orixás) behind Catholic saints.

¹⁰⁰ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 171–6.

¹⁰¹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 119, 154. German travel writer, Princess Therese von Bayern similarly stereotyped Brazilian women as lazy and sickly, Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” p. 206. June Hahner argues that this stereotyping of Brazilian women had started in 1808 with British merchant John Luccock, see Emancipating the Female Sex: The Struggle for Women’s Rights in Brazil, 1850–1940 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), p. 1.

¹⁰² Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 329–30.

¹⁰³ Ina von Binzer also noted how these women terrorized their slaves, Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” pp. 206, 208. As one fazendero explained to the Archduke, “what could one, two, or even three white men do among hundreds of slaves without moral superiority?” Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 359.

¹⁰⁴ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 138, 283.

¹⁰⁵ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 155, 219, 228, 252–3.

¹⁰⁶ Maximilian was apparently speaking of the cashew fruit rather than the nut, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 123–4, 249.

¹⁰⁷ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 122.

¹⁰⁸ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 125.

¹⁰⁹ See Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” p. 176.

¹¹⁰ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 105–6.

¹¹¹ Maximilian would accept the advice of locals when it came to his own choice of attire for his forest excursion, Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 176, 288.

¹¹² Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 105, 127, 130.

¹¹³ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 127, 155.

¹¹⁴ The old capital had been in Bahia, Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 104.

¹¹⁵ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 119, 169, 210, 326, 354.

¹¹⁶ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 111, 162, 205.

¹¹⁷ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 182, 350–1.

¹¹⁸ See Teresa Cribelli, Industrial Forests and Mechanical Marvels: Modernization in Nineteenth Century Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 20–1, 80–1.

¹¹⁹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 212. French botanist, August de Saint Hilaire, similarly argued that Brazil needed a strong central state, see Costa, “European travelers,” p. 225; Lughofer, “Ferdinand Maximilian von Habsburg’s Literary Work,” p. 89.

¹²⁰ This advice would be deleted in the 1867 version, García Wistädt, “Los viajes de Maximiliano de Austria,” p. 41.

¹²¹ Günter Kahle, “Erzherzog Maximilians Projekt einer habsburgischen Doppelmonarchie in Amerika,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas 25:1 (1988), pp. 169–88. After Maximilian accepted the Mexican throne, Ludwig Viktor would refer to his brother as “Montezuma,” Konrad Ratz, Maximilian und Juárez (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1998), p. 163.

¹²² Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 164, 210–2.

¹²³ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 169.

¹²⁴ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 168.

¹²⁵ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 168, 203.

¹²⁶ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 374. Maximilian found only one sugar-mill worked by steam. But rather than an unconditional promoter of industrial progress, he had mixed feelings, seeing modern industrial labor as “a refined slavery, a separation between the sort of intelligence of the machine, and the untutored mass of half-starved subordinates, who transmit their curse from generation to generation,” Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 243, 278. In fact, Ida Pfeiffer argued that slaves, in fact, were better off than European factory workers since employers did not have to feed or house them, Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” p. 234.

¹²⁷ For this reason, Maximilian warned Germans with “empty pockets” from immigrating to Brazil, Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 132, 321–2.

¹²⁸ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, pp. 375.

¹²⁹ Maximilian, Recollections, vol. 3, p. 408.

¹³⁰ Many visitors would deem the palace ordinary and unworthy, Diggs, “Brazil after Humboldt,” pp. 170–172. Upon meeting Pedro’s daughters, Maximilian would receive a stuffed hummingbird and a king vulture, see Levy Rocha, Viagem de Pedro II ao Espírito Santo (Vitória: Governo do Estado do Espírito Santo, 2008), pp. 211–27.

¹³¹ Joan Haslip would call the ceremonial regulations, “pathetic,” The Crown of Mexico (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971), pp. 237–8. For a discussion of Maximilian’s efforts to legitimize his empire, see Robert H. Duncan, “For the Good of the Country: State and Nation Building during Maximilian’s Mexican Empire, 1864–67” (PhD diss., University of California, Irvine, 2001).

¹³² Niceto de Zamacois, Historia de Méjico desde sus tiempos mas remotos hasta nuestros días, vol. 18 (México: J. F. Parres y Compañía, 1881), p. 7; El Diario del Imperio, 6 July 1865.

¹³³ Maximilian to Degollado, Palacio de Mexico, 17 June 1866, Papers of Joaquín and Mariano Degollado 1861–1923, File 2, University of Texas, Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.

¹³⁴ See, for example, Eugene C. Harter, The Lost Colony of the Confederacy (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1985).

¹³⁵ Félix Eloin to Luis Robles, San Salvador de Seco, 27 April 1865 in James C. Shields, “Inmigración y colonización durante el segundo imperio mexicano” (PhD. diss., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, 1958), pp. 128–9.

¹³⁶ Luis González y González, “El indigenismo de Maximiliano,” in La Intervención Francesa y El Imperio de Maxiimiliano: Cien Años Después, eds. Arturo Arnaiz Freg and Claude Bataillon (Mexico: Asociación Mexicana de Historiadores, 1965), p. 103.

¹³⁷ Luis Arroyo to Faustino Chimalpopoca Galicia, Palacio de Mexico, 24 November 1863, Library of Congress, Manuscripts Division, Austria. Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv (Vienna), Archiv Kaiser Maximilians von Mexiko, 1861–1865, box 114, fols. 107–110; Luis Arroyo to Gutierrez de Estrada, Palacio de Mexico, 27 November 1863, box 112, fols. 303–306.

¹³⁸ Maximilian to Karl Ludwig, Chapultepec, 6 January 1865 in Egon Caesar Count Corti, Maximilian and Charlotte of Mexico, trans. by Catherine Alison Phillips (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929), pp. 464–5; Jack Autrey Dabbs, “The Indian Policy of the Second Empire,” in Essays in Mexican History: the Charles Wilson Hackett Memorial Volume, eds. Thomas E. Cotner and Carlos E. Castañeda (Austin: University of Texas, 1958), p. 124.

¹³⁹ “Instrucciones del emperador a la Emperatriz para el viaje de Yucatán,” reproduced in Luis Weckmann, Carlota de Bélgica, correspondencia y escritos sobre México en los archivos europeos (Mexico: Editorial Porrúa, 1989), p. 340.

¹⁴⁰ Decree, Comisario Imperial Domingo Bureau, Mérida, 1 June 1866 in Diario del Imperio, 21 June 1866.

¹⁴¹ Corti, Maximilian and Charlotte, p. 591.

¹⁴² Unfortunately, the exchange never took place. Carlota to Marqués Corio, Chapultepec, 8 August 1865, reproduced in Weckmann, Carlota de Bélgica, p. 151.

¹⁴³ Diario del Imperio, 14 June 1865.

¹⁴⁴ Maximilian to Francisco Artigas, Mexico, 30 November 1865; Decree, Mexico, 4 December 1865 in Diario del Imperio, 5 December 1865.

¹⁴⁵ Maximilian to Karl Ludwig, Chapultepec, 6 January 1865 in Corti, Maximilian and Charlotte, p. 464.

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Robert H. Duncan

Robert H. Duncan received his PhD from the University of California, Irvine in History where he teaches courses on Latin America as a Continuing Lecturer for the Dept. of Global and International Studies. His research interests center on mid-nineteenth century Mexico with a focus on Maximilian’s Second Empire. He has published articles in the Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of Latin American Studies, among others. An earlier version of this article was presented to the “Historical Reflections on Latin America: A Gathering in Honor of Steven Topik,” UC Irvine (June 2019). [email protected]