Imperial Policies and Politics: Continuing Debates in the History of Brazil

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Perpetual debate, rather than consensus, was the driving force behind laws and policies approved in the Brazilian Empire (1822-1889). Stemming from civil law tradition, Brazilian legal development largely derived from the deliberative dynamics of a parliamentary-styled system that subjected bills to deep if prolonged scrutiny. Yet in spite of this fact so familiar to historians of Brazil, many scholars portray 19th-century lawmaking as belonging to a non-descript, cohesive “elite” with an outsize causal historical power. Compounding this shortcoming is the fact that, rather than assess the social, political and economic conditions that underwrote the making of specific laws, historians often resort to the categories of “success or failure” to evaluate legal impact. This panel intends to address these problems by returning to four legal landmarks in the history of Imperial Brazil with the aim of providing new narratives and questions about their conditions of emergence: the “Lei Feijó” of 1831, the 1850 Land Law, the 1860 “Law of Impediments” and the Free Birth Law of 1871. Following relatively recent studies on patronage, factionalism and party formation to advance new social history approaches centering on inter-elite conflict and emergent perspectives from business history, the panel will also open a conversation about the centrality of archival innovation and critical revisionism in analyzing the political history of Brazil.

Sub Track

• History and Historiography

Chair

• Judy A Bieber, University of New Mexico

Individual Presentations

• Brazil and the Brazilian Slave Trade Between Two Global Swings, 1831-1850 - Tâmis Parron

• Beyond Latifundia and Fazendeiros: Toward a History of the 1850 Land Law that Does Not End with Coffee Barons - José Juan J Pérez Meléndez, University of Chicago

• The Law of Impediments (1860): Polarization and Economic Policy in Imperial Brazil - Bruna I Dourado, Universidade Federal Fluminense - UFF

• International Dimensions of the Brazilian Free Birth Law (1871) - Rodrigo Goyena Soares, Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO)

Discussant

• Roderick J Barman