Propaganda, Censorship, and the Shaping of the Brazilian Experience in the First World War

Abstract

This article places itself within the renewal of the cultural-historical paradigm of the First World War and the global perspective of the conflict in Latin America. Due to the lesser intensity of its military involvement in the war, the region has been considered “peripheral” and largely overlooked by the historiography of the conflict. The First World War has also been relatively ignored by Brazilian historiography, although the country was the only South American nation to become a belligerent in 1917, a decisive year in the various theatres of the war. Thus, I seek to analyse the impact of propaganda and censorship in Brazil during the First World War, particularly when the country entered the conflict. It will tackle two main reactions unleashed by this event. On the one hand, it led the Allied to enlarge the production, translation, and distribution of war propaganda in Brazil. On the other hand, it gave rise to a novel approach regarding the Brazilian war effort, which was considered more valuable to the great powers in terms of transatlantic censorship. Ultimately, this assessment concludes that the Brazilian cultural and political mobilisation in the First World War was more complex and nuanced than the current historiography suggests.

Keywords

• first world war
• brazil and the great war
• censorship in brazil 1914-1918
• latin america and the great war