The hydra at the tropics

British workers in the border of the order

Abstract

In the 19th century, British men spread to various parts of the world and did so for a bunch of reasons. However, such emigration movement was personified in historiography by large traders and investors, sometimes ignoring workers and, even more, drunks and troublemakers. Thus, the objective of this article is to show episodes of the participation of destitute workers in the worlds of labor in Brazil at the end of the 19th century, when Great Britain exerted great influence in the country. To this end, the selected documents cover a scope that is not limited to urban centers, commercial houses, or industries, quite the contrary. They were on city streets, in rural areas of the country, on beaches, in bars, or anywhere they wanted to be. To reach these workers, British consular documents and travel reports were used - to understand how they saw their countrymen in a precarious situation in an unknown country - besides Brazilian newspapers.