Brazil has been modernizing for at least a century, despite the survival today of some characteristics of a traditional society. If the pace of change has been slow, it is because so many of the economic, social, and psychological prerequisites for a modern system were not present in 1850. The pre-conditions cannot be formed overnight, and the steps taken to establish them, be they ever so small, are as significant as later changes that are more easily measured. These early changes are what interest us here. Brazil began to move closer to the modern world during the period from 1850 to the First World War.

This period may be sub-divided at two points: 1865–70 and 1888–90. The pace of change was initially so sluggish that the modifications of the established order during the first fifteen or twenty years after 1850 were not easily perceived. But they were very real, nevertheless, and, working in subterranean ways, these changes softened the foundations of the old regime to such an extent that only a major crisis was needed to send cracks up along the exterior walls and spread alarm among the guardians of the ancient structure. Such a crisis was the war with Paraguay which began in 1865 and lasted for five frustrating years. At its end, Brazil entered a period in its life characterized by increasingly virulent attacks upon the traditional society. Slowly, the aging edifice began to crumble, and, in twenty years, some of the staunchest pillars of conservatism had given way.