The Revolt of the Whip: celebrating the 100th year

Abstract

This article celebrates the centenary of the sailor's mutiny as well as the 50th anniversary since the publication of Edmar Morel's A revolta da chibata. It focusses on the polyphonic, biographical and active character of that referential work. It also addresses the reasons behind the current author's own work 1910: a revolta dos marinheiros: Uma saga negra (1982), stressing the sailors’ metamorphose (a “boarded proletariat”) in light of Navy modernisation, syndicalism and pronounced racial confrontation, all three being important factors of the mutiny. It goes on to discuss the milieu from which such analyses have emerged (the present one, as well as Marcos Siva’s study Contra a Chibata : marinheiros nacionais em novembro e dezembro de 1910 (1982) and questions the historiographical silence that has generally followed (with the exception of Hélio Leôncio Martins’s book (1988)). We bring to the fore the first scholarly study of the event, Álvaro Pereira do Nascimento's "Marinheiros em revolta: recrutamento e disciplina na Marinha de Guerra (1880-1910)" from 1997. Finally, we look at the influence of Potemkin’s Revolt, in 1905, on the 1910 Brazilian movement; this connection is underlined in Cisnes negros: uma história da revolta da Chibata (2000), an actualized version of the present author’s work from 1982.