The Conservative Party and literary education in the Brazilian empire (1841-1863)

Abstract

Abstract The centralization of the system of public instruction in eighteenth century Brazil, related to the centralization of the main public institutions of the country, was the result of parliamentary victories of the Saquaremas, as the illustrious representatives of the conservative party were called. Since 1837, when Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos (1795-1850) assumed the virtual leadership of the government, the conservatives had proposed centralizing measures. Although one used to say at the time that there was nothing more similar to a Saquarema than a Luzia with political power, there was a hierarchical relation between the two parties, even though both were complementary parts of the government, which was composed by what was considered the “good society”, that is, the political elite of the empire. Such hierarchical relation was due to the failure of the Luzias’ – or liberals’ – project of forging a political direction to the country. Such project was accomplished by the Saquaremas, who had reduced the revolutionary pretentions of their opponents to the condition of rebellions. This article investigates how the institutionalization of literary education in Brazil was related to the Saquaremas’ political project, who aimed to form the spirit of those who would later be part of the bureaucratic framework of the empire. To do so, many legislative pieces were used as sources, including parliamentary debates and ministerial reports, besides the political, educational and literary historiography of the period.