Power and administration on nineteenth-century Maranhão

the case of the Military Settlement of Gurupi

Abstract

Study concerning the administrative practices and social relations
established by the directors of a microcosm of the brazilian
administration: the Military Settlement of São Pedro de Alcântara do
Gurupi. It investigates, stemming from the diverse historiographical
approaches on the thematic and by an exhausting documentary
research, the different forms in which the imperial administration in the
Second Reign was carried through, taking as both starting and arriving
point the Military Settlement of Gurupi. Created in 1853, this colony was
an enterprise of the Brazilian government in the Empire, installed in the
right edge of the Gurupi river, in the border between Maranhão and
Pará. The guardianship of the State ended in the year of 1878, excited by
the recurrent questionings on the efficiency of this enterprise. This study
stems from the historiographical debates about State and power, as
well as the debate about the public administration in Brazil. It is based,
basically, in primary documentation, resting upon the historical and
sociological literature concerning the thematic.