“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

complex legal and political relationships percolating below broad structures of imperial
continuity. Rather than taking the consolidation of an elite landowning class for granted,
these accounts have focused on the process through which these groups articulated their
power within the contours of an evolving Brazilian society. For example, Richard Graham’s
groundbreaking study demonstrated how patronage relationships formed the connective
tissue with which the empire exercised control over its vast territories, working through local
elites to ensure social order. 21 In a similar vein, Thomas Flory has explored how reforms of
the judicial structure during the “liberal decade” between 1827 and 1837 consolidated the
authority of a new landowning class at the local level. 22 Focusing particularly on Rio Grande
do Sul, Stephen Bell has explored the complex evolution of the gaúcho ranching economy,
rejecting notions that it was mired in traditionalism and economically stagnant. 23 Similarly,
Roger Kittleson has examined the role of popular urban communities in driving the political
transformation from liberalism to positivism in Porto Alegre over the later half of the 19 th
century. 24 Taken together, these works have stressed the importance of focusing on local
practices, law and social relations in narrating the Brazilian empire’s gradual evolution over
the long 19 th century.
One of the goals of this study is to bring these observations about the multifaceted
nature of the Río de la Plata’s political development in the wake of the collapse of authority
during the revolutionary decades into conversation with a growing body of legal scholarship
21
Richard Graham, Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1990).
22
Thomas Flory, Judge and Jury in Imperial Brazil, 1808-1871: Social Control and Political
Stability in the New State (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).
23
Bell, Campanha Gaúcha. A “gaúcho” is a common nickname for the residents of Rio
Grande do Sul province.
24
Roger Alan Kittleson, The Practice of Politics in Postcolonial Brazil: Porto Alegre, 1845-1895
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006).
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