The government and the opposition: the dispute for the Additional Act in imperial Brazil

Abstract

Published in the newspaper of the provincial government of Parana, the series of articles The government and the opposition was written in defense of the president of the province in the case of the judicial district of S. Jose dos Pinhais. Guided by the Ginzburg microhistorical approach, this research aimed to discover, based on four particular texts, whether it was possible to grasp general issues of Imperial Brazil. Reconstructing the public discussion to which these anonymous articles belonged led to realize that they were an episode of a broader novel on the interpretation of the Additional Act of 1834, the only constitutional reform of the Imperial Charter of 1824. Said Act represented a (federative?) pact between the crown and the provincial oligarchies. Although narrow and biased, the window opened by the four editorials allows to glimpse a lush interpretive garden: divided into party doctrines, with individual nuances, incoherencies and, most importantly, a constitutional custom. The imperial form of state, then, was designed according to a historically settled game of legal interpretation. Enviado el (Submission Date): 16/04/2020 Aceptado el (Acceptance Date): 23/06/2020