Ragamuffin War

The Ragamuffin War (Portuguese: Guerra dos Farrapos), also known as the Ragamuffin Revolution or Heroic Decade, was a republican uprising that began in southern Brazil during the regency period, centered in the province of Rio Grande do Sul and, for a time, extending into Santa Catarina. It began on 20 September 1835, when rebel forces seized Porto Alegre, and soon turned into a wider confrontation between Brazil's imperial government and a coalition led by Bento Gonçalves and Antônio de Sousa Neto, who proclaimed the secession of the province and the creation of the Riograndense Republic following the rebel victory at the battle of Seival in 1836. The war is often situated within the political and institutional instability of Brazil's regency period, when several armed conflicts erupted across the country, exposing the fragility of the imperial authority amid disputes between the Central government and Brazil's provinces over the latter's degree of autonomy. In Rio Grande do Sul, whose economy relied on livestock and the production of jerked beef for the internal market, the immediate cause for revolt lied on the landowners dissatisfaction with high export taxes and import duties on salt imposed by the Imperial government, while Uruguay and Argentina benefited from more favorable taxation in Brazilian markets, thus making the local produce less competitive within the country, but it is also attributed to a desire for greater autonomy and opposition to the government's centralized control over the province. Once proclaimed, the new republic operated from shifting inland capitals such as Piratini, as Porto Alegre remained in Imperial control for the remainder of the conflict after being recaptured in 1836. From the late 1830s onward, the war also became entangled with the politics of the wider Río de la Plata region, as the rebels pursued agreements and alliances with neighboring Argentine...