A diplomacia brasileira durante a República Velha (1889-1930) uma análise do pensamento de Rui Barbosa quanto à questão do Acre à segunda Conferência de Paz de Haia e à entrada do Brasil na Primeira Guerra Mundial

Abstract

The main objective of our research is to analyze Rui Barbosa’s original contributions to Brazilian diplomacy concerning three issues during the Old Republic (1889-1930): the Acre Question, the Second Hague Peace Conference and the Brazilian participation in World War I. Therefore, this work seeks to answer which solutions were found by Brazil to the questions above based on Rui Barbosa’s original contributions. Concerning the Acre Question, before being chosen as one of the Brazilian plenipotentiaries to solve the dispute, Barbosa was already writing for the press and speaking at the Senate exposing his views on the subject. With respect to the Second Hague Peace Conference, Barbosa was the head of the Brazilian delegation and turned out to be a key element in the various issues discussed in the event, such as Brazil’s defense of the principle of legal equality among sovereign states. As for World War I, Barbosa criticized the notion of neutrality that existed in the period and created a new one in order to eliminate the passivity of neutral countries, including Brazil, in relation to abuses of international law. Our research method is the hypothetical-deductive and the methodology is qualitative, based on studies of primary and secondary sources. At the end of our research we will prove the hypothesis that Rui Barbosa made original and essential considerations to the issues that have been studied, which demonstrates his importance as a Brazilian political personality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.