On February 25, the Program in Latin American Studies hosted Brazil LAB researcher Miqueias Mugge for a discussion on his paper, Prisoner, Sailor, Settler, Soldier: The Many Lives of a Migrant in the Brazilian Empire. Mugge presented his study on how Brazil’s imperial planners sought to recruit German-speaking migrants as both settlers and soldiers in the early nineteenth century. His research draws from extensive archival work across Europe, the United States, and Brazil, reconstructing the global networks that shaped Brazil’s frontier policies. The talk focused on Johann Heinrich Lembke, a sailor and lace merchant who was imprisoned in Mecklenburg before being transported to Brazil as part of an experimental settler-military project. Mugge argued that Lembke’s story illustrates the broader dynamics of coerced migration, state-building, and imperial maneuvering.

Expanding on his research, Mugge discussed how Lembke and other migrants were not merely passive subjects of empire but engaged in acts of negotiation, resistance, and adaptation. Mugge traced Lembke’s transition through different forms of social control—from European prisons to the Brazilian frontier—demonstrating how migration was shaped by overlapping legal and military frameworks. He also examined the ways in which European diplomatic networks, particularly through figures like Georg Anton von Schaeffer, facilitated Brazil’s recruitment of settlers, drawing on models of militarized colonization from Russia, Austria, and Britain. The presentation underscored how these global connections shaped Brazil’s attempts to secure its borders, manage its Indigenous populations, and project itself as a modern empire.

Ada Ferrer, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, provided comments. The discussion that followed was lively and interdisciplinary, with participants raising questions about the intersections of migration, slavery, military service, and Indigenous displacement in Brazil’s empire-building efforts.