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- Convenor:
-
Nuno Monteiro
(Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa)
- Location:
- Sala 38, Piso 0
- Sessions:
- Friday 19 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel uses the term "political communication" to underline the importance of understanding the production, subjects and the destination of the representations from the peripheries to the centre of the Portuguese monarchy and vice versa in its 16th to 18th century pluricontinental dimension.
Long Abstract:
This panel views political communication as the key to understanding the longevity of an empire like that of Portugal's in which the resources available to assimilate its various parts were extremely limited in human and material terms. Many aspects of this have been studied in detail, such as the policy of royal grants. The king, who was the head of the monarchy, was by definition absent. Even within the territory of the kingdom, the royal progress traversed an increasingly confined space. The governors and captains-general were up to a point his agents, as were, at a different level, the magistrates and justices. However, there were other ways of communicating with the centre, at times against the governors or against the justices. In fact, in the General Archive of Simancas prior to 1640, as is the case later in the various councils and courts of the central administration of the Braganças, petitions and applications - individual, collective or institutional - abound. In essence, it was a widespread and well known practice. It was partly muddled with a judicial act, and in that sense, is a perfect example of the large grey area that existed under the Ancien Regime between the judicial and the administrative. What we wish to suggest is that petitions of all kinds were an essential instrument of political communication in the Portuguese monarchy of the Ancien Regime, and that systematic study of them would enable us to understand better its forms of political functioning and its integration mechanisms.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 19 July, 2013, -Ana Canas D. Martins (Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical)
Paper short abstract:
The creation and circulation of documents, especially between the kingdom and the Portuguese possessions of the Atlantic Africa, and the record keeping practices of the Conselho Ultramarino and the Secretaria de Estado da Marinha e dos Domínios Ultramarinos is analyzed and their archives deconstructed.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers that the archives (institutions) and the records (documents) shape information retrieval and historical knowledge in ways often unquestioned both by archivists and users. Revealing how records were born, used and mediated and how archives were made up, helps to understand the power and limits of the archives of the Conselho Ultramarino and Secretaria de Estado da Marinha e dos Domínios Ultramarinos for writing history and telling other stories. Thus, the purpose for the production of specific documents such as the petitions and the following documentary chain, their features, and the needs of the several private and public players, are analyzed. Also, factors such as distance and transport in relation to the administrative time, the political decision making and the record keeping systems of these overseas central offices, are enlightened. Finally, attention is paid to the transfer and division of archives, to the archivist's profiles and practices (labeling, classifying, arranging) and to what is more or less documented.
António Castro Nunes (CIDEHUS - Universidade de Évora)
Paper short abstract:
The main theme of this study is the political communication between the central government of the Portuguese monarchy and its local authorities (Câmaras). The analysis will focus on the particular case of the Évora municipality between 1700 and 1750.
Paper long abstract:
The main theme of this communication is the circulation of political and administrative
information between the Câmara de Évora and the central governments of the Portuguese
monarchy in the first half of the 18th century. Considering the documentation received by the
município in the given period, the aim is to identify the main actors and circulation channels,
the production rhythms and the most relevant subjects. To this end some quantitative
exercises will be presented.
A special emphasis will be given to the role of the institutional intermediaries of this
communication, whether in their action as information distributors, or in their supervisory
powers. Considering the multiplicity of agents involved in this process, the analysis was
circumscribed to the Corregedor, Provedor de Comarca, Juiz de fora, Superintendente dos
Descaminhos do Tabaco, Superintendente da Criação dos Cavalos and the Vedores do
Exército e Artilharia.
Priscila de Lima Souza (University of São Paulo (USP)) Luiz Silva (UFPR)
Paper short abstract:
Throughout the eighteenth century significant changes were introduced in the discourses of the pardos in the Portuguese America. In their petitions, they introduced new concepts, which tried to circumvent the color prejudice and to require its assimilation those which are born without blemish.
Paper long abstract:
Throughout the eighteenth century significant changes were operated in the discourses of the men called pardos about their hierarchical position in the Portuguese America. Through petitions that requested letters patent, remuneration for services rendered, honors, and privileges, the pardos introduced new concepts in the field of discourse, which tried to circumvent the color prejudice and to require their assimilation those which are born honored and without blemish. Part of these new categories was the result of transformations operated in the Atlantic world during the eighteenth century. However, the laws issued by Marquis of Pombal after 1760 were more decisive to create that discursive field. This communication, therefore, proposes that such petitions reflected, on the one hand, a significant change in the use of certain categories by the pardos as a result of those laws and, on the other hand, that this change was not political, but only aspired the possibility to change their position of the outsiders to the established under the Old Regime.
José Eudes Gomes (University of Lisbon)
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview on the military appointment system for the Portuguese America from 1777 to 1808.
Paper long abstract:
One of the most defying issues for the Portuguese overseas empire was to defend their colonial possessions across the globe. Furthermore, it was crucial to maintain under rule its diverse populations, in order to guarantee their political domain and economic advantages. In the Portuguese America, in particular, many authors underlined the military appointment system as a major mechanism to make imperial government possible and to sustain the social order. Even more because the formation of militias commanded by local notables was one the strategies applied by the Portuguese crown to avoid the costs demanded by the professional army. Nevertheless, in the period from 1777 to 1808 the rates between the military appointments made by the local governors in America and their corresponding registrations in Lisbon are clearly contrasting. This fact points the practical limits imposed for the king and his councilors to control the system as well as for the need to measure in which extent this responsibility had to be delegated to the royal overseas representatives.
Maria Renata Duran (Universidade Estadual de Londrina)
Paper short abstract:
This work is dedicated to the diffusion of oral tradition through literature produced in the papers of the first three decades of the XIX century in the Rio de Janeiro’s education.
Paper long abstract:
After Brazilian Independence in 1822, the most direct survival of the rhetoric and eloquence happened in meetings and assemblies that resulted into the first Brazilian constitutions. Most of these speeches were printed in the newspapers of Rio de Janeiro until the third decade of the nineteenth century, where there was also the continuation of a logical structure and a universal vocabulary already shared by the public on traditional eloquent practices. Beginning with the characterization of these works according to their literary style and then by the formation of a public receiver of these message, we worked to write a final word on the definition of patriotism that literature-inspired eloquent left the Brazilian then, as has the legacy of rhetoric.