DANGEROUS MEETINGS”: ILLICIT GATHERING AND POLITICS IN IMPERIAL COURT (1830-1841).
city-Court; gathering; crime; civilization and discipline
In the period of construction of the Imperial Brazilian State – especially the years between the crisis of the First Reign and the consolidation of the Regresso -, the politics and the social issues were imbricated. In the dispute for a project of nation, the city-Court of Rio de Janeiro, capital of the Empire, was a mirror to the “order” and chaos. In Parliament, the proposals were debated for a new legal framework based on the principles of impersonality and rationality. The challenge, however, was to adapt civilizational and disciplinary ideas contained in codes, to a society marked by the logic of urban slavery. Furthermore, the political groups rivaled in the assemblies and on the streets of the city by regrouping the popular layers for their causes, manipulating the social dissatisfaction and the political instability. In that sense, the formation of the State´s repressive apparatus used a police institution that, besides combating and repressing the offences, each day was more and more active in the prevention of urban disorder. The purpose of this research, when analyzing this kind of police crime - illicit gatherings -, is to understand if the dangerous meetings – identified in the police files-, actually constituted a crime. And also how the public institutions, especially the justice and the police, measured the intent of criminal practices tied to groups of people around the city and, in this sense, how they applied the repression; considering that the criminal code of the Empire of 1830 defined as a crime: “Any gathering of three or more people with the intention of committing an offence”.