Amnesty for whom ? A comparative study of the trajectory of the social actors of the Officers’ Revolt of 1893 and Sailors’ Revolt of 1910 in Long Time

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, two important revolts marked the history of the Navy. The first, known as the Armada Revolt, took place in 1893 and it also became known as an officers’ revolt. The second, called Revolt of the Whip, was organized by Navy soldiers in Rio de Janeiro in 1910, mostly blacks and browns, against corporal punishment. The main actors involved in both events were granted amnesty. However, the treatment they received and the recognition within the Navy were quite different. In the first case, the main leaders resume their official status, they are awarded, promoted, such as Custódio de Melo, Saldanha da Gama and Eduardo Wandenkolk, and even become Ministers of the Navy, as Alexandrian de Alencar. In the second case, the seamen are persecuted inside and outside the Navy, such as the sailors João Cândido, Francisco Dias Martins, Gregório do Nascimento, Alberto Ribas and others. This article intends to analyze these trajectories in a comparative way, discussing the action of the Navy in a long time, the internal memory in naval history, as well as the forms of national recognition in the political and civil spheres. These events are located in the history of the First Brazilian Republic, but they have many effects throughout the twentieth century and up to the present day