Join us Tuesday, February 7th, from 4-5 p.m. ET for a hybrid Fellow’s Forum with Vitor Izecksohn, professor in the Graduate Program of Social History at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Attend in person: Berkeley Conference Room, the Jefferson Library
Join via ZOOM »
About the Presentation
The period between 1750 and 1775 was a time of intense imperial competition in the Atlantic of the Americas. My presentation examines how the Seven Years' War –– what could be called the first World War –– affected militia organization in two very different colonial polities, the Portuguese Province of Rio de Janeiro and the British colony of Virginia. I emphasize patterns of collaboration established between each imperial government and its colonial elites. These patterns involved complex negotiations and interactions among imperial authorities, local elites and the free population. Although most of my talk will concern the Luso-Brazilian experience, whenever possible, I will analyze the prevalent recruiting practices and compare patterns of collaboration between imperial peripheries and metropolitan governments, stressing the role of reward and integration in each society.
About Vitor Izecksohn
Vitor Izecksohn is a professor in the Graduate Program of Social History at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He earned his PhD in History from the University of New Hampshire and has had fellowships from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Max Planck Institute of European Legal History. He served as a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Brown University and at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University. He is the author of, Slavery and War in the Americas: Race, Citizenship, and State Building in the United States and Brazil, 1861- 1870 (University of Virginia Press, 2014), and his current research “Race and Militias in Colonial Rio de Janeiro and Virginia,” analyses how wartime recruitment refracted political dynamics at local, regional, and imperial levels.