The political communication in the pluricontinental Portuguese monarchy: Kingdom, Atlantic and Brazil (1580-1808)

The political communication in the pluricontinental Portuguese monarchy: Kingdom, Atlantic and Brazil (1580-1808)

This project does not propose the study of unknown information, but rather another way of looking at and treating sources that have already been partly examined. The term "political communication" has been used by political scientists to describe the new methods of circulating political information in modern societies that are not confined only to the passive, mass reception of television, but also include other means and agents, including the internet, altering the content and forms of delivery. We use it here to underline the importance of understanding and studying the production agents, production rhythms, circulation channels, types of subject and, lastly, the final 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. This is a fundamental issue, already partly studied under other titles, but which gains greatly from being studied in a systematic, relatively uniform manner comparing different geographical regions. In recent decades, Portuguese historiography, like its Brazilian counterpart, has come to realize the scanty resources which the monarchy had to manage its vast territories, both in Europe and in the more remote places under its control. There has been much discussion about the ways and means by which, despite the scarcity of resources, those territories were held together for so long. Many aspects of this have been studied in detail, such as the policy of royal grants. However, what is proposed for research here is of particular importance because it was a necessary mediation of almost all others. 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 (corregedores, ouvidores and provedores). However, there were other ways of communicating with the centre, at times against the governors or against the justices. One of the distinctive features of the Portuguese monarchy was something that it shared with the Spanish monarchy, "which developed a highly co-ordinated imperial administration", in that "everyone could appeal to the royal courts (....), to which even the Viceroy was subject" (Pagden). All this applied equally to Portugal. In fact, in the General Archive of Simancas (AGS) prior to 1640, as is the case later in the various councils and courts of the central administration of the Braganças (in particular the Overseas Council where the islands and overseas territories are concerned), 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. There was not, in fact, a clear distinction between matters of "grace" and matters of "justice". It seems that under various names, petitions, applications, appeals or pleas were a common practice in western Europe, at least where there was a strong influence of Roman law. A debatable issue is whether or not there was a fundamental distinction between this practice and the drafting of petitions that took place at the time of the summoning of the Cortes or States-General, or between individual petitions and collective or institutional petitions. Further, petitions existed alongside other forms of political communication such as letters, pamphlets or, in the context of the 18th century and the emergence of what has come to be called the public space, alongside the press. 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.

 

Estatuto: 
Proponent entity
Financed: 
No
Entidades: 
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Keywords: 

Political communication, Local powers, Administration, Social mobility

This project does not propose the study of unknown information, but rather another way of looking at and treating sources that have already been partly examined. The term "political communication" has been used by political scientists to describe the new methods of circulating political information in modern societies that are not confined only to the passive, mass reception of television, but also include other means and agents, including the internet, altering the content and forms of delivery. We use it here to underline the importance of understanding and studying the production agents, production rhythms, circulation channels, types of subject and, lastly, the final 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. This is a fundamental issue, already partly studied under other titles, but which gains greatly from being studied in a systematic, relatively uniform manner comparing different geographical regions. In recent decades, Portuguese historiography, like its Brazilian counterpart, has come to realize the scanty resources which the monarchy had to manage its vast territories, both in Europe and in the more remote places under its control. There has been much discussion about the ways and means by which, despite the scarcity of resources, those territories were held together for so long. Many aspects of this have been studied in detail, such as the policy of royal grants. However, what is proposed for research here is of particular importance because it was a necessary mediation of almost all others. 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 (corregedores, ouvidores and provedores). However, there were other ways of communicating with the centre, at times against the governors or against the justices. One of the distinctive features of the Portuguese monarchy was something that it shared with the Spanish monarchy, "which developed a highly co-ordinated imperial administration", in that "everyone could appeal to the royal courts (....), to which even the Viceroy was subject" (Pagden). All this applied equally to Portugal. In fact, in the General Archive of Simancas (AGS) prior to 1640, as is the case later in the various councils and courts of the central administration of the Braganças (in particular the Overseas Council where the islands and overseas territories are concerned), 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. There was not, in fact, a clear distinction between matters of "grace" and matters of "justice". It seems that under various names, petitions, applications, appeals or pleas were a common practice in western Europe, at least where there was a strong influence of Roman law. A debatable issue is whether or not there was a fundamental distinction between this practice and the drafting of petitions that took place at the time of the summoning of the Cortes or States-General, or between individual petitions and collective or institutional petitions. Further, petitions existed alongside other forms of political communication such as letters, pamphlets or, in the context of the 18th century and the emergence of what has come to be called the public space, alongside the press. 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.

 

Objectivos: 
.
State of the art: 
he research theme that is proposed in this project can be viewed as at the centre of concerns that have appeared in various historiographies in recent decades. Essentially, it deals with the way of thinking about relations between the central power and other powers in a political unit that covered very extensive and diverse territories. The way of interpreting such relations is the subject of new thinking in Portuguese and Brazilian historiography and, in general, in international historiography. In terms of the relationship between the central power and local powers in the limited context of the kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves, it can be said that until very recently, the omnipresence of the Crown, the idea of early centralisation, the use of the concepts of State and Nation in a near modern sense, and the idea of the atrophying of all powers other than those of the monarchy were the common heritage of all Portuguese historians, virtually without exception. It was not until recent historiography that these received ideas, successively perpetuated since Alexandre Herculano, were directly challenged. In the historiographical shift that took place, the works of Ant&oacute;nio Hespanha and J. Romero Magalhães were especially important. In the former's works (Hespanha, 1982, 1983, 1986a and 1986b), one finds a systematic critique of the idea of early centralisation and the retrospective projection of the modern concept of the State, in favour of a corporative model in the representation of society in the early-modern period and of the meagre resources then at the command of the central power. The latter's works (Magalh&atilde;es (1984)1988, 1985 and 1994, Coelho &amp; Magalh&atilde;es, 1986) emphasise the vitality and autonomy of city councils against the pretensions of an absolutism claimed by the Crown and its agents since the end of the Middle Ages. These two contributions were the initial signs of a change in direction that resulted not only in a change of perspective radically opposed to longstanding received ideas but also in a wealth of monographs, summaries and critiques (cf. Vidigal, 1989; Monteiro, 1994, 1996 and 2007; Capela (coord.), 1998; Cardim, 1998; and Cunha & Fonseca (ed.), 2005), to which members of the Portuguese team contributed.\n Brazilian historiography on the colonial period has undergone various changes in the last decade in relation to the proposed theme that merit mention. Inspired in part by the contributions of historiographers of other countries who have emphasised the negotiated dimension of the European overseas empires of the Modern Age, as against a view emphasising the model of a unilateral colonial domination transferred from contemporary models (Greene, 1994 and 2003), a significant group of Brazilian researchers set out to review the concepts underlying the analytical model of the &quot;old colonial system&quot; (Novais, 1986). Instead, they emphasised the capacity of the colonial elites for the accumulation of wealth, the existence of imperial networks involving a web of multiple interests and, lastly, the idea of a growing protagonism on the part of the local Brazilian elites, in particular through the municipal councils (cf. Boxer, 1965), and their ability to send representations and question decisions that affected them (Fragoso &amp; Florentino, 1993, Fragoso, 1998, Gouveia, 1998, Bicalho, 1998 and 2001, Russell-Wood, 1998, Sampaio, 2006, and many other contributions). <p>Among those contributions, particular mention should be made of the book O Antigo Regime nos Trópicos (Fragoso, Bicalho & Gouvêa, 2001), to which many members of the project team contributed. This revision of dominant concepts has in turn prompted various works (Bicalho & Ferlini (Org.), 2005) and bruising critical responses (Souza, 2006). Overall, both the contributions on relations between the Centre and the peripheries in the kingdom and those that focus on imperial contexts have contributed to a revised view of the Portuguese monarchy of the 17th and 18th centuries and the way it managed the political integration of its diverse territories. Although political communication is only one of those integrating aspects (and also a possible source of conflicts), the fact that it can serve as mediation for the wide variety of relationships in this scenario enables us to rank it as one of the more important indicators for the discussion of the proposed theme. In particular, this project provides a direct comparison, until now not attempted systematically, between the periphery's communications with the centre of the kingdom and that to and from the overseas and island possessions. It also offers ways of evaluating it in qualitative and quantitative terms. At best, it is expected that it will supply a decisive contribution to determining to what extent, for example, there was or was not a difference in status between a town council in the kingdom and one in Brazil. In other words, it is hoped that it will provide new pointers for questioning some of the basic concepts frequently used to discuss the institutional and social realities concerned. Finally, the qualitative treatment of the themes of political communication and its channels will provide pointers for discussion of a whole range of issues mediated by it, such as the status of the offices, the way they were transmitted (for example, through women), mercantile activities and the political connections of commercial networks, the subject of taxation or the issue of the formation of multiple identities in the space of a vast pluricontinental monarchy. Special attention should also be paid to analysing the vocabulary of the political players as revealed by the sources examined. In that sense, the questionnaire of themes outlined in the research plan, after the essential tasks have been listed, should not be regarded as a final list but rather as an initial listing of topics that the research will make it possible to extend or correct.
Parceria: 
Unintegrated
Mafalda Soares da Cunha
Pedro Cardim
João Luís Ribeiro Fragoso
Maria Fernanda Baptista Bicalho
António Carlos Jucá de Sampaio
Edval de Souza Barros
André Alexandre da Silva Costa
José Manuel Damião Soares Rodrigues
Ronald Jose Raminelli
Coordenador ICS 
Referência externa 
PROJ50/2010
Start Date: 
10/01/2010
End Date: 
09/01/2013
Closed