Ch.13 The Old-Fashioned Emperor and the Red Sultan
Brazil’s Republic
- Brazil had been ruled by only two emperors in its short history. The first emperor of Brazil, Pedro I, was the son of the king of Portugal. When Pedro was a little boy, Brazil wasn’t even a country. It was a Portuguese colony.
- Pedro grew up in the colony of Brazil. When he was twenty-three, his father (the king of Portugal) gave him the job of governing Brazil. A year later, Pedro led Brazil in declaring independence from Portugal-and from his father. He became Pedro I, the first emperor of an independent Brazil.
- In 1889, the year after slavery was made illegal, Pedro II realized that he would not be able to keep his throne any longer. He was now sixty-three years old. He had spent his life working to make Brazil a rich, free, well-educated, modern country-a modern country that no longer wanted to be ruled by an old-fashioned emperor.
Abdulhamid the Red
- The Ottoman constitution lasted for exactly one year. Then Abdulhamid ordered it dissolved. Now he would rule like an old-fashioned sultan, with no constitution or parliament to limit his power.
- Many Armenians were killed by Abdulhamid‘s soldiers. Others were forced to march out of the Turkish territory, and died of starvation and weariness on the long walk. The killing went on for three years. No one knows exactly how many Armenians were killed, but at least a hundred thousand men, women, and children died.
- The people of Turkey called themselves the ˝Committee of Union and Progress.˝ But others called them the ˝Young Turks”.
