Total War, International Systems, and Social Change

The Second World War was not an isolated event that pulled countries from every continent into an armed conflict but rather the culmination of a process that redefined global capitalism, which resulted in the consolidation of U.S. hegemony over a new system of international relations based on the idea of a world composed of formally sovereign nation-states. As the culmination of the conflicts to redefine spheres of power in the first half of the twentieth century, the war presented new risks, demands, and opportunities for state power projects on the global periphery. This chapter discusses the contributions of authors such as Karl Polanyi, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, Charles Tilly, Giovanni Arrighi, Theda Skocpol, Geoff Eley, and Arno Mayer, among others, to understanding the historical conditions for the rise of mass nationalism in Brazil in the context of the Second World War.