Politics' soldiers: party strife and Institutional relations in the Military Question context (Brazil, the 1880s)

Abstract

Empire, precisely the so-called “military question”. In the historiography, the topic is understood as a turning point that eroded such relations, and approached as fundamentally corporative, or as an ominous sign of the growing incompatibility, since the Paraguayan War, between the officers, who inculcated modernizing expectations, and the monarchy’s political elite, represented as the bulwark of an archaic social order grounded in slavery. However, exploring the primary sources – particularly official documents, newspapers, and correspondence –, I intend to argue that the military question can only be understood bearing in mind the Empire’s complex institutional framework and the party dispute dynamics.