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The Role of the Law Graduate in the Political Elite of Imperial Brazil
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Extract
By the application of fresh analytical approaches such as prosopography and the concepts of “secular trend” and “conjuncture” pioneered by the Annales school, historians are at last beginning to probe the social and political structures of Latin America in the national period. What before had been surmised or supposed, particularly in regard to the dominance of political and social life by elites, can now be quantitatively confirmed, while the identification of secular trends permits the historian to penetrate behind the confusion of the incidentals to the basic characteristics of the different nations and their evolution over time.
The standard interpretation of Imperial Brazil (1822-1889) has until recently been that of a stable but anomalous monarchy dominated for most of its existence by its ruler Pedro II. The aging of the Emperor, the abolition of slavery on which the regime is conceived as being based, the discontents of the military, and the inevitable advance of Republicanism have been taken as the principal causes for the collapse of the Brazilian Empire on November 15, 1889.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , November 1976 , pp. 423 - 450
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Miami 1976
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