O gabinete da conciliação: atores, ideias e discursos (1848-1857)

Abstract

This current work analyzes the 12th Ministry of the Second Empire, known as the Ministry of Conciliation (1853-1857). The objective is to comprehend the motivation, implementation, reception and results of the politic of conciliation in the decade of 1850. Because, although the conciliation was a part of the political culture of the Empire, especially until 1870, D. Pedro II, Paraná and their group knew how to use this political culture in a way to actualize a Government‟s project, that up to that moment hadn‟t been achieved. The focus of this research, therefore, is the process of appropriation of this political culture and the management of a political project between the years of 1848 to 1857. This way, finding to get away from the historiographical chains that limit, each one on its own way, the reading of the political dynamic of the years of 1850, and going from a bias that considers the crises, the conflicts, as well as the dissonant opposing speeches, the current research comprehends the Ministry of Conciliation as a result of a sum of the elements, that taken separately lose its explanatory value. In this way, the Conciliation wasn‟t even a natural consequence of the political maturity of the Empire and the parties, neither the “machiavellian” work of a part of the statesmen, interested in deceiving their opponents. Beyond D. Pedro II‟s political maturity, that although is not supposed to be overrated, cannot be denied, the Conciliation was the politic chosen to solve the problems that came from 1848 on, that brought the liberal predominantly to an end and marked the return of the conservatives. In another hand, the projects of judicial reform and electors presented by the Ministry are supposed to be analyzed as significant episodes of debates that emerged still in the decade of 1840 and that are closely connected to bigger matters, such as the process of formation of the Imperial State and the establishment of a modern and efficient political system.