Pela boa ordem da província e pela glória do império – famílias, estratégias e suas tramas na administração imperial do Maranhão (c. 1750-c.1840)

Abstract

After the disruption of Independence in 1822, some obstacles undermined the goal of conserving the immense territory of the emerging Empire of Brazil, as it had remained in the colonial period. The captaincies, renamed to provinces, retained in their spaces different actors, grouped into traditional families of those places whose interests and projects did not necessarily converge with the determinations of the new governing core, the city of Rio de Janeiro. This was the case of Maranhão, a province of a growing economy based on agro-export and trafficking of enslaved Africans, whose incomes had been maintaining the Portuguese Court for some years - even under constant complaints about the weight of taxes, the trade balance, and the interference from the dealers from the United Kingdom. Although resistance to the independence project was supplanted in 1823, resulting in "coalescence" of the province, long was the path taken by its new representatives, members of the families of the region, to a negotiating space that would enable the incorporation of their claims. To map and to analyze this dilatory process of framing the elite families of Maranhão to the imperial political body, we focused on the period of First Reign and Regency. At that period, we can see the finalization of the first elections that allowed the sending of their representatives of the General Assembly, while in the province began the sessions of the Presidency Council (generally called the Presider Council) and the General Council of Maranhão. Working with the president of the province, these institutions brought together citizens of the locality itself to deal with the "business" of their interest, building, clearly, the new scope of regional power that fulfilled the vital role of establishing communications with the Court. A more accurate inquiry has shown that the new constitutional agenda did not inaugurate power disputes in the province. Representatives of elite families have been committed to participating in bureaucratic administration since the mid-18th century. Since 1823, factions and political identities were adapted and mobilized to dispute access to the administrative and fiscal posts. On the other hand, we observe the permanence of certain practices and strategies, architected under the patronage of the old families and their networks of sociability - whose "qualities" and skills invested until then were adjusted to keep and expand their status and privileges. The repercussion of this power game in the Province of Maranhão exceeded its borders, urging the constitution of a complex network of relations, which managed alliances and proposals amid the process of integration into the imperial state. Alternating different scales (institutional and social, individual and family, "regional" and "national"), this thesis aims to investigate how these elite actors and groups (political and family) fought to articulate and readapt themselves under new conjunctures, while being able to enable the unification of the territory and the strengthening of a centralized authority, which was perpetuated as the Empire of Brazil.