O Brasil entre as grandes potências: a diplomacia presidencial de Arthur Bernardes na Liga das Nações (1919-1926)

Abstract

The League of Nations was, by the time of its creation, the most elaborate attempt to peacefully organize international relations. After World War I, secret diplomacy developed by European countries was considered one of the elements that contributed most to the generalization of the conflicts of 1914. From the 1920s, therefore, there was an attempt to change the functioning of the balance of power in the through an organization that publicized all international agreements, and to include all nations in the debates on the most important issues in the world. At that time, the Brazilian governments of Presidents Epitacio Pessoa (1919-1922) and Arthur Bernardes (1922-1926) developed the project of making Brazil a permanent member not only of the League of Nations, but also of its Council, a body responsible for the most important decisions of the institution. The Bernardes government, however, turned this project into an initiative to modernize Brazil, inserting it in international relations at any price. Bernardes developed a daring policy: to secure the permanent place in that Council for Brazil; a strategy so bold that Brazil vetoed Germany's entry into the League, seeking to secure a permanent position. Without succeeding, Bernardes removed Brazil from the League, causing weariness in the diplomatic relations between the members of the organ. Historiography, however, is unclear on the reasons for this veto and for the Brazilian political strategy then adopted. It is pointed out the president's own inopportune personality, as well as the search for political prestige as motives. This work, however, proposes new sources, new characters and new research perspectives on this theme. This study of Brazilian diplomacy in the League of Nations in the 1920s could clarify not only Bernardes' decisions but also the very relationship between President and his diplomats.