On Nabuco's Maritime Imagination

This article argues that Joaquim Nabuco???s abolitionist writings present a sea-based account of Brazilian national development. A critical dialogue with historian Oli-veira Martins defines this process as a transition from a deformed colony to a reformed nation: the former enclosed in the immoral South Atlantic of the slave trade, the latter part of an ocean unified under English hegemony and human values. While not ruling out a land-based national life in the future, the author is ultimately skeptical of the idea of a society isolated from the Eurocentric pull of the sea. The article opposes two trends in the specialized literature: equating Brazilian space to Brazilian land and shrinking the reach of Nabuco???s view on world order. Instead, it highlights Nabuco???s transoceanic perspective, presenting him as a maritime thinker of Brazilian political and social reality.