First Brazilian Republic

The First Brazilian Republic, the Old Republic, officially the Republic of the United States of Brazil, was the Brazilian state from 1889 to 1930. It opened with the coup that deposed Emperor Pedro II in November 1889, and it closed when the Revolution of 1930 installed Getulio Vargas as president. The First Republic divides into two periods: the Republic of the Sword, a military dictatorship under the marshals Deodoro da Fonseca and Floriano Peixoto, from 1889 to 1894, and then the Oligarchic Republic to 1930, when real power lay in the states and in local bosses called colonels, who dispensed favours and delivered votes through the unwritten rules of coronelismo. The presidency alternated between the elites of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, coffee and dairy, a system its critics named milk coffee politics. The economy was agrarian and rested on coffee exports. The regime faced the two naval revolts, the Federalist Revolution, the war of Canudos, the Vaccine Revolt, the Revolt of the Whip and the tenentist movements, and the tensions of the 1920s brought the Liberal Alliance to power in 1930.