American Antiquarian Society
185 Salisbury Street
Worcester, MA 01609
United States
In this program, Roberto Saba will discuss with Manisha Sinha his new book American Mirror: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Emancipation, which explores the methods through which antislavery reformers fostered capitalist development in a transnational context. From the 1850s to the 1880s, this coalition of Americans and Brazilians—which included diplomats, engineers, entrepreneurs, journalists, merchants, missionaries, planters, politicians, scientists, and students, among others—consolidated wage labor as the dominant production system in their countries. Saba argues that these reformers were not romantic humanitarians, but cosmopolitan modernizers who worked together to promote labor-saving machinery, new transportation technology, scientific management, and technical education. They successfully used such innovations to improve production and increase trade.
Roberto Saba is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Wesleyan University. He received his PhD in Transregional History from the University of Pennsylvania. Saba is the author of As Vozes da Nação: A Atividade Peticionária e a Política do Início do Segundo Reinado [The Voices of the Nation: Petitions and Politics in the Beginning of Brazil’s Second Reign] (São Paulo: Annablume, 2012). His recent book is American Mirror: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Emancipation (Princeton University Press, 2021). Saba approaches US History from transnational and comparative perspectives and his research focuses on capitalism, imperialism, and slavery. He held a Hench Post-Dissertation Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society in 2017.