Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A corte no exílio: Civilização e poder no Brasilás vésperas da independência (1808 a 1821)

2005; Duke University Press; Volume: 85; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-85-1-138

1527-1900

Neill Macaulay,

Sociology and Education in Brazil

Some historians of the independence period in Brazil have been faulted for giving more space to the November 1817 nuptials of Prince Pedro and Princess Leopoldina in Rio de Janeiro than to the revolt in Pernambuco a few months earlier. Jurandir Malerba invites such criticism by making the royal wedding the subject of the first of the five “acts” into which he divides A corte no exílio, while scarcely mentioning the Northeastern uprising anywhere in the book. No such criticism is warranted, because civilization and power in Brazil were indeed concentrated in Rio on the eve of independence, and, as the author amply demonstrates, the transformations symbolized by the festivities of November 1817 did more to shape the emerging Brazilian state than did any regional insurrection. Grounded in the thought of Norbert Elias and his disciples, Malerba approaches the civilizing and state-building processes in Brasil joanino with an eye for the sociology of the arts—especially the theater (Act II). He principally deals with the impact of the court presence in Rio on the customs and manners of the local residents in Act III, discusses the changing role of the monarch in Act IV, and examines the formation of a new nobility from old elites in Act V.Malerba focuses on monuments and artifacts, scenes of everyday life and public spectacles as rendered by artists of the time, official reports and panegyric literature, and accounts by private observers. Scholars are familiar with virtually all this material. The author acknowledges as much in the epigraph and reminds the reader of it at the end of the book, citing Blaise Pascal: “Si les matières ne sont pas nouvelles, la disposition en est nouvelle” (pp. 7, 296). Malerba’s approach to documents is more exegetic than historiographic. He mixes letters and reports into his text in their entirety, from salutation to closing, with the original orthography intact. Long quotations—either in the original language or from published translations—from John Luccock, Louis de Freycinet, Luís Gonçalves dos Santos, and other familiar sources are strewn through the book. What may be unacceptable in a narrative history is perhaps necessary in a work of this hermeneutic nature, but the sheer volume of quoted material seems excessive. Much of it could have been omitted or relegated to appendixes without weakening the analysis.Malerba concludes that the adaptation of court etiquette to the colonial society and tropical environment of Rio, and the awarding of titles of nobility and other honorifics to wealthy residents, strengthened the attachment of the fluminense elite to the monarchist ideology. The lower orders of society, including city slaves, enjoyed the spectacles and were mollified by the expansion of the Portuguese institution of the royal beija mão (hand kissing) in Brazil, and by other concessions, such as the toleration of the ceremonial court of the Congo King in Rio. Most importantly, the author finds that when King João VI and his court departed Rio in 1821, they left power in the hands of a new nobility composed almost exclusively of big import-export merchants and slave traders. Malerba’s findings support the view that native landowners contributed little to the founding of Brazil’s independent monarchy. Later, however, the interests of the landowners would coincide with those of the slave importers, and together they would force the abdication of Brazil’s first emperor.A corte no exílio is by no means the definitive study of this remarkable prelude to Brazilian independence. More comprehensive, and no less thoughtful, is Kirsten Schultz’s magisterial Tropical Versailles: Empire, Monarchy, and the Portuguese Royal Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821 (Routledge, 2001). What Malerba offers are rare ontological insights into the body of knowledge on which the Brazilian monarchy was established.