Homens e cousas in the Age of Reform, Brazil, 1868-188

My dissertation examines the attitudes and behavior of politicians with regard to social and political reform in Brazil between 1868 and 1889. By identifying major political factions at the provincial and central levels of government and by juxtaposing their declared positions on reform with their clientelistic transactions, my work seeks to explain the intricacies of reform politics characterized by conflicts over patronal practices, ideological propensities, and regional interests. My systematic research in late nineteenth-century private correspondence, parliamentary debates, political pamphlets, newspaper articles, and memoirs leads me to conclude that the ideology of reform intersected and clashed with the practice of patronage in this volatile period of Brazilian history, so that under its impact politicians often acted and reacted with contradictory impulses, whether they were reformers, counter-reformers, or followers. It also reveals why Brazilian reform politics during the period was full of paradoxes: politicians who had similar ideological convictions or inclinations were embroiled in power struggles by virtue of their different patronage connections, while those who held different ideologies were often compromised by their shared need for clientelistic transactions. Thus my work for the first time establishes the inter-relationship between the twin crises of the Brazilian imperial political system and of the institution of slavery, on the one hand, and the bewildering and tortuous reform agenda, on the other. Furthermore, my work refutes some previous assumptions and theories about the relationship between the state and society in nineteenth-century Brazil.