Dimensions of color and faces of politics in the Brazilian Empire: a study based on the trajectory of the Viscount of Jequitinhonha

Author(s)

Sebastião Eugenio Ribeiro de Castro Junior

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2023-09-29

Examining board members

Ricardo Figueiredo Pirola; Larissa Moreira Viana; Larissa Franco Moreira; Lucilene Reginaldo; Elciene Rizzato Azevedo

• Advisor: Ricardo Figueiredo Pirola

Abstract

A very well-known figure to scholars dedicated to the nineteenth century Brazil, Francisco Gê Acaiaba de Montezuma, Viscount of Jequitinhonha (1794-1870), is a character yet to be properly explored by historiography. Born as a free man in Bahia, northeast region of Brazil, Viscount of Jequitinhonha was marked by the signs of African ancestry, and transited ably between the worlds of politics and letters in Imperial times. In them, he made his fortune, and stood out in spheres traditionally occupied by subjects who, often, if not socially qualified as white, at least seemed to want to be recognized as such. Carrying a strong commitment to the biographical, this work proposes the pursuit of the Viscount’s steps to unravel and discuss, through them, some of the different mechanisms, possibilities and limits of insertion and social mobility that marked, both in public and private spheres, the construction of identities, relationships and hierarchies in nineteenth-century Brazil. The thesis hereby defended is that the transformations and slow erosion of the slave regime stimulated a progressive hardening of social boundaries delineated from attributes of each individual, such as origin, color and legal condition (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/11799-0 - Dimensions of color and faces of politics in the nineteenth century's Brazil: a study based on the trajectory of the Viscount of Jequitinhonha
• Grantee: Sebastião Eugenio Ribeiro de Castro Junior
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate