A novel published in parts
Quincas Borba first came out as a serial, from 1886 to 1891, in the magazine A Estação, of Rio de Janeiro, and was gathered into a book in 1891, with differences from what the magazine had printed. The story was therefore written over five years, while the country in which it is set was changing: slavery ended in 1888, and the Empire fell on November 15, 1889, with the proclamation of the Republic. By the time the book appeared whole, the world it describes, that of 1867 to 1871, was already past. In a later prologue, Machado tells how the second edition sold out faster than the first, and declines a friend's request to write a trilogy with Sofia at its center, because, he says, she is already all in this book (prologue).
Pedro II's Rio in 1867
The action begins in 1867, when Brazil was an empire ruled by Pedro II and Rio de Janeiro, the Court, was the capital. Slavery is everywhere: the philosopher's will includes slaves among the assets (chapter XIV), and on the train Rubião, who intends to sell the slaves he inherits and free only his page, reads the speech from the throne, the emperor's address at the opening of the chambers, which carries a word about "servile property" (chapter XXI). In the same conversation, Palha turns to politics, the chambers and the war in Paraguay, which Brazil fought from 1864 to 1870 and which filled the conversations of the time. The end of the book reaches 1871: in the months the narrator lets pass, he mentions the debate over the law of the free-born (chapter CXCII), which would become the Free Womb Law of September 1871, declaring free the children of enslaved women born from then on.
Imperial politics: ministers and deputies
Camacho, the politician who wins Rubião over, hears from him, at a counselor's house, an account of the session in which the Itaboraí Ministry asked for the budgets, and comments with him on the conservatives' return to power and the dissolution of the Chamber (chapter LVIII). This is the crisis of 1868, when Pedro II changed the cabinet and the Viscount of Itaboraí took over the Ministry. The emperor appointed and dismissed ministers at will, and so the fate of a deputy like Teófilo, left out of the new Ministry and consoled with a provincial presidency, depended on a will above his own (chapter CLXXII, chapter CLXXVII). The election of deputies was indirect and required a minimum annual income, and the candidacy is offered to Rubião only after the inheritance (chapter C). A political newspaper could be set up with the share capital of a few partners: the Atalaia, Camacho's sheet, has fifty contos of capital in ten shares of five, and Rubião puts in one (chapter LXI).
Where Quincas Borba and his empire come from
The philosopher had already appeared in the Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, of 1881: there he is a former schoolmate of Brás Cubas, who goes from beggar to wealthy heir, creates the doctrine of humanitism, and goes mad. In this novel, it is Brás Cubas who writes to Rubião giving him the news of the philosopher's death (chapter XIII). The doctrine, which treats war and victory as the way life preserves itself (chapter VI), recalls the theories of the struggle for life that circulated in Europe after Darwin's On the Origin of Species, of 1859.
Rubião's delirium also has a date. Napoleon III governed France from 1852 to 1870 and lost the throne when the Prussians captured him at Sedan, in September 1870. Rubião keeps the busts of Napoleon I and Napoleon III on his desk (chapter CXXXIV), gets the emperor's beard in January 1870 (chapter CXLVI), sees the Franco-Prussian War sharpen the crises (chapter CLVI), and, in his final fever, imagines he has captured the King of Prussia (chapter CXCIX).