Roderick Barman and Jean Barman - The Role of The Law Graduate in The Political Elite of Imperial Braz PDF

The Role of the Law Graduate in the Political Elite of Imperial Brazil
Author(s): Roderick Barman and Jean Barman

Source: Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Nov., 1976), pp.
423-450
Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/174990 .
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RODERICK BARMAN
Department of History
University of British Columbia
Vancouver V6TIW5
British Columbia CANADA
JEAN BARMAN
Vancouver, British Columbia
THE ROLE OF THE LAW GRADUATE

IN THE POLITICAL ELITE
OF IMPERIAL BRAZIL
By the application of fresh analytical approaches such as

prosopography and the concepts of "secular trend" and
"conjuncture" pioneered by the Annales school, historians are
at last beginning to probe the social and political structures of
Latin America in the national period. What before had been
surmised or supposed, particularly in regard to the dominance
of political and social life by elites, can now be quantitatively
confirmed, while the identification of secular trends permits the
hstorian to penetrate behind the confusion of the incidentals to
the basic characteristics of the different nations and their
evolution over time.
The standard interpretation of Imperial Brazil (1822-1889)
has until recently been that of a stable but anomalous
monarchy dominated for most of its existence by its ruler Pedro
II. The aging of the Emperor, the abolition of slavery on which
the regime is conceived as being based, the discontents of the
military, and the inevitable advance of Republicanism have been
AUTHORS' NOTE: This article is a revised version of a paper read to the American
Historical Association in December 1974. The authors would like to thank the
Foreign Area Fellowship Program and the Canada Council for their generous support
of their research and Joe Love for his comments on the original paper.
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 18 No. 4, November 1976
? 1976 Sage Publications, Inc.
[423]

[424] JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS
taken as the principal causes for the collapse of the Brazilian

Empire on November 15, 1889. The reasons for the strength of
the regime and for its long endurance have been assumed, and
there has been little investigation of the nature of the political
community during the Empire, of the make-up of the ruling
elite, or of the internal causes of decay and collapse.
The examination of the internal sociopolitical structure of
the Empire and its development over time is best undertaken by
a prosopographical analysis of the elite, which involves the
establishment in standardized form and content of a reliable
and easily manipulable biographical data base covering the
entire period of the Empire.' In order to avoid the weakness of
many elite studies, where the smallness of the group studied
makes possible the identification of neither characteristics
unique to the elite nor the relationship between the elite and
the larger political community, the biographical data base
should include both members of the elite and of what may be
termed the elite pool-that is, the social group or groups from
which the elite members were ordinarily drawn.
While considerable theoretical difficulties surround any ab-
stract definition of an elite, the practical restraints of research
resolve most of the problems by making membership in certain
institutional bodies the equivalent of membership in the elite.
In the case of Imperial Brazil, our own research and our
qualitative knowledge of the period suggests the adoption of a
working model composed of three concentric circles. The
innermost circle is the core elite of the Brazilian Empire-
members of the Imperial family, the Council of State, the
Senate, and -the Council of Ministers. The second circle, the
middle elite, is composed of the members of the Chamber of
Deputies, of the High Command of the Army and Navy, of the
Supreme Tribunal of Justice, of the presidents of the most
important provinces, and of those elected to the "triple list" for
a Senate vacancy.2 Members of these institutions usually but
not invariably belonged to the elite. The outermost circle
contains the peripheral elite, such as the judges of the Courts of
Appeal, the presidents of the minor provinces, and the
substitute deputies.3

Barman, Barman / ROLE OF THE LAW GRADUATE [425 ]
Qualitative research indicates two restrictions to this working

model of the elite. First, while membership in the -right
institutions brought the probability it did not bring the
certainty of elite membership. Elite membership required a
minimum of ability, a force of character, energy, and per-
sistence and preferably a combination of all three.
Second, a single Brazilian elite never existed. A national elite,
based geographically on Rio de Janeiro, was linked to and
dominated local elites of varying importance. Success in the
national elite was aided by a strong position in a local elite.
Leading members of the important local elites-those of Rio de
Janeiro province, Bahia, Pernambuco, and southern Minas
Cerais-could usually secure entry into the national elite if they
so desired and took the initiative. An important constraint was
that effective membership in the national elite normally
entailed residence in or near Rio de Janeiro. Members of the
local elites of the smaller and weaker provinces, in particular
Mato Grosso, Espirito Santo, and Amazonas, were unlikely to
obtain national elite membership unless unusually talented. The
positions which in other provinces would have given them
entry, such as seats in the Chamberof Deputies and the Senate,
were usually not available to them but were reserved by the
national government for those members of the national elite
who neither through birth nor cooption (usually by marriage)
belonged to a local elite. It is with the members of the national
elite that we are concerned in this article.
In the case of Imperial Brazil, the definition of the elite pool
with which the elite must be compared and from which it was
drawn does not present great problems. One of the most
poignant differences between the ruled and their rulers in Brazil
has always been the illiteracy of the mass and the culture,
almost desperate in its sincerity, of the few. Less than one in
four free males could read and write in 1872 (Brazil, Directoria
Geral de Estatistica, 1873) and, while a million literates is an
impossible figure to handle, literacy does indicate the broadest
parameters for any elite pool. Literacy is linked to education,
and to be truly educated in Imperial Brazil meant to be a

[4261 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS
homem letrado, a bacharel, the possessor of an academic degree.

The holders of postsecondary degrees fairly can be said to have
constituted the elite pool of the Brazilian Empire.
The vast majority of degree holders living in Brazil from 1822
to 1889 had attended one of the following institutions of
postsecondary education: the Pernambuco (Olinda) Law
School, the Sao Paulo Law School, the Rio de Janeiro Medical
School, the Bahia Medical School, the Rio de Janeiro Polytech-
nical School (previously named the Military and then the
Central School), or the University of Coimbra in Portugal. A
few graduates were produced by the School of Mines in Ouro
Preto and by the School of Agriculture in Bahia, and a number
of Brazilians held degrees from foreign universities other than
Coimbra. In all, the total number of graduates lies somewhere
between 12,000 and 15,000, of which -the law graduates,
totaling some 7,000 (including 4,023 from Pernambuco, 2,660
from Sao Paulo, and 756 from Coimbra), would form possibly a
majority and certainly a plurality.
The numerical superiority of -the law graduates and the
preeminence held by them in the Portuguese administrative
tradition (Schwartz, 1973: Part I) helped to establish their
dominance of the key political institutions of the Empire, as
Table 1 demonstrates in respect to the Senate and the Council
of Ministers. As the table also shows, the dominance of the law
graduates gradually increased so that in the middle years of the
Empire fully seven out of every ten ministers and senators were
law school graduates. In this article-a preliminary application
of the techniques of prosopography and of the concept of the
secular trend to the sociopolitical structure of the Brazilian
Empire-our attention is restricted to the law graduates and to
their relationship to the national elite.
A quantitative study of the lives and careers of all lavw
graduates makes clear that the stability of the Brazilian Empire
was created by and, for the greater part of its existence,
depended upon a single generation of men who graduated in law
from the University of Coimbra in the 1820s. These Coimbra

TABLE I
Academic Training of Ministers and Senators of the.Braz
Period in which served Total Law Medical Civilian Degree

or nominated Number Degree Degree Math or in oth
Engineer subject
Degree
Ministers of
Governments of:
16.1.22-5.4.31 46 20 (43%) 0 3 ( 7%) 2 ( 4
7.4.31-18.5.40 41 20 (49%) 1 ( 2%) 3 ( 7%) 2 ( 5
24.7.40-31.8.64 79 56 (71%) 0 5 ( 6%) 2 ( 3
12.5.65-25.6.75 54 45 (83%) 2 ( 4%) 4 ( 7%) 0
5.1.78-end of Enpire 63 51 (81%) 3 ( 5%) 2 C 3%) 0
All ministers of Empire 220 147 (67%) 6 ( 3%) 10 ( 5%) 4 ( 2
Senators nominated between:
22.1.26-6.4.31 55 33 (6o%) 2 ( 4%) 1 C 2%) 3 C5
7.4.31-23.7.40 29 15 (52%) 0 0 0
24.7.40-11.5.65 73 50 (68%) 2 ( 3%) 4 ( 5%) 0
12,5.65-4.1.78 36 29 (81%) 3 ( 8%) 0 0
5.1.78-end of Empire 40 26 (65%) 4 (10%) 4 (10%) 0
All senators of Ethpire 233 153 (66%) 11 ( 5%) 9 ( 4%) 3 ( 1
Senators at end of Empire 55 39 (71%) 4 ( 7%) 5 ( 9%) 0
SOURCES: Information on academic training taken from data base and Nogueira and Sere
Tavares de Lyra (1926, 1946). Information on ministers.and senate nominations from Braz
4 Brazil, Senado (1886).
4 a. Such training in some cases included a degree in mathematics or engineering.
b. In the period 22.126-23.7.40 the majority were priests.

40,
N) TABLE2
Brazilian-Born Students Graduating from Coimbra, by Subje
Canon or civil Medicine Mathematics -Philo

law th
1776-80 66 3 4
1781-85 49 1 2
1786-90 46 3 1
1791-95 35 4 2
1796-1800 4o 8 1
1801-05 30 14 3
1806-10 34 0 3
1811-15 9 1 0
1816-20 44 1 1
1821-25 101 6 3
1826-30 35 3 2
Total 1489 341 22
SOURCES: Morais (1949), Fonseca (1951), and Rio de Janeiro, Biblioteca Nacional (1943).
a.-Where, as in 90% of cases, students remained for the fifth year and were "formado," that
"bacharel" after four years, that year is considered to have been the year of graduation. So
subject; in such cases only the earliest subject is used.

Barman, Barman / ROLE OF THE LAW GRADUATE [429]
graduates dominated both politics and the judiciary from 1831

until the generation died out in the 1870s. Since their example
created the assumption that the completion of a law degree was
the key to entry into the national elite, more and more
Braziliansattended the national law schools established in 1827.
By the 1850s the production of graduates began to outdistance
the number of elite positions availablef,while the continued
dominance of power by the original group blocked upward
access. As a consequence, severe generational conflicts were
created, conflicts intensified by the incidence of filhotismo,
nepotism practiced by the Coimbra group in favor of their
offspring. The very success of the law school graduates
therefore created the long-term trends which served to under-
mine the regime they so loyally built and supported. In short,
the internal dynamics of the Imperial regime played a very large
role in its eventual disappearance.
Elites do not appear fully formed. They emerge from existing
sociopolitical structures which, in the case of Imperial Brazil,
evolved during the Portuguese colonial regime. No institutions
of postsecondary education existed in colonial Brazil until the
foundation of the medical and military schools in 1808 and
1810. Consequently, when the Brazilian-bornwanted to study
law, they had to go overseas, usually to the University of
Coimbra in Portugal. As indicated by Table 2, some 622
Brazilians graduated from Coimbra in the period from 1776 to
1830, with 489 of them receiving their degree in law.4
Since the very act of crossing the Atlantic made men
distinctive, the number of Braziliansmatriculating, and not just
graduating, at Coimbra is of significance.5 As Table 3 shows,
although nearly 1,000 Brazilian-bornmatriculated in all subjects
at Coimbra between 1771 and 1830, the Brazilian-bornusually
represented no more than one in 20 of total instake and never
more -than one in seven. In fact, the level of entry attained by
the Brazilian-bornin the 1770s was not reached again until after
1817. Students entering after 1817 also came from a basically
different group of families than those in the previous century.6

TABLE3
Brazilian-Born Students Matriculating at Coimbra, by Region and as a Percenta
Years North Northeast Northeast Center Center Center

(PA,MA, (PE,PB, (BA,SE) (MT,GO) (MG) (RJ,ES)
PI) CE,RN,
AL)
1771-75 0 15 (14%) 18 (17%) 3 ( 3%) 19 (18%) 38 (37%

1776-80 3 ( 4%) 21 (25%) 18 (22%) 2 ( 2%) 19 (23%) 15 (18%
1781-85 3 C 3%) 14 (16%) 19 (22%) 1 ( 1%) 31 (36%) 16 (19%
1786-go 6 ( 7%) 9 (10%) 21 (23%) 4 ( 4%) 29 (32%) 19 (21%
1791-95 13 (16%) 4 ( 5%) 15 (19%) 1 ( 1%) 13 (16%) 23 (29%
1796-1800 9 (16%) 1o (18%) 16 (2'9%) 0 8 (15%) 12 (22%
801-05 7 (11%) 16 (25%) 13 (21%) 2 ( 3%) 9 (14%) 12 (19%
18o6-loa 4 (21%) 2 (11%) 2 (11%) 1 ( 5%) 0 8 (42%
1811-15 3 ( 5%) 12 (21%) 27 (48%) 0 5 ( 9%) 9 (16%
1816-20 21 (15%) 11 ( 8%) 67 (48%) 2 ( 1%) 16 (11%) 19 (13%
1821-25 23 (19%) 11 ( 9%) 41 (34%) 3 3%) 5 ( 4%) 27 (23%
1826-30a 11 (13%) 3 ( 3%) 39 (45%) 0 3 ( 3%) 20 (23%
SOURCES: As in Table 2, with figures for total students (unavailable before 1800) taken from
a. Coimbra was closed during the years 1810 and 1828.

Barman, Barman / ROLE OF THE LAW GRADUATE [431 ]
While in the early years Minas Gerais supplied the plurality of

students, the primacy switched very definitely to Bahia after
1817, a fact which helps to explain the omnipresence of
bahianos in high judicial positions during the Empire.7
The varying geographical distribution of students entering
Coimbra was directly related to varying economic prosperity in
the different areas of Brazil; not surprisingly so, since sending
offspring to Coimbra was not cheap. Our available data suggests
a predominance among parents of wholesale merchants, of
mineowners, and of wealthy fazendeiros, occupations com-
manding spare cash or credit (Fonseca, 1951).8 The other
means of financing study at Coimbra was to depend upon the
bounty of one's parentela, or clan of relatives in Portugal, a
practice that would favor the children of recent immigrants. In
fact, after 1800 a substantial proportion of students entering
Coimbra had Portuguese-bornfathers (Fonseca, 1951).
Prior to the flight of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil in
1808 a number of Braziliangraduates seem to have remained in
Portugal to make their careers. After 1808 a career in Brazil
became not only more attractive but more feasible (Manchester,
1972). The annual entry of Brazilian-bornstudents at Coimbra
rose sharply and the time taken for a degree stabilized at five
years. The modal age at graduation was 25, which meant that
the Brazilian-born went abroad as students not during late
adolescence but during early manhood. The friendships made
and the experience gained at Coimbra was therefore important
and, in the case of the generation of students entering between
1817 and 1827, the experiences of student life were decisive
both for the individuals and for the development of the
Brazilian Empire (see Lacombe, 1944: 61-79, 88-107; Soares de
Sousa, 1944: 19-26; and Velho, 1908: 411-413).
From 1821 to 1825 the prolonged struggle for Brazilian
independence took place, a struggle which involved open
warfare after 1822. Although somewhat protected by their
parentelas, Brazilian students at Coimbra suffered all the
isolation, alienation, and hostility that a rejected minority has

to bear. The publication in April 1823 by a Brazilian student of

a newspaper defending Brazil's right to independence and
criticizing the Portuguese Liberals for their inconsistency in
wanting liberty for themselves but not for Brazil caused a riot
directed against the Brazilian students. The newspaper was
suppressed. This was not a lone incident. When most of the
Brazilians met at a private house for a banquet to celebrate
Brazil's independence, a group of Portuguese students expelled
them from the house and threw the tables and food into the
street. Only one Portuguese was ever arrested for this attack
(Morais, 1949: 422-423).
The recognition of Brazilian independence by Portugal in
1825 did not improve the position of the Brazilian students at
Coimbra. In the struggle that lasted from 1827 to 1834 between
the absolutist D. Miguel and the constitutionalist D. Maria da
Gloria, the Brazilian students were generally identified with the
latter. When the students attempted to proclaim their neutrality
by wearing the Brazilian colors, they were, reported one student
in 1828, roughed up and "two of them were even arrested and
brought to [the Vice-Rector's] presence for wearing the
'republican' colours" (Lacombe, 1944: 106-107).
As minorities generally do when under attack, the Brazilian
students coalesced, adopting as virtues the very characteristics
that the majority despised. There thus emerged among the
students a very strong identification with Brazil, previously
absent or dormant. To this nationalism was linked an equally
strong hatred of absolutism in all its forms. The common
experience of adversity among the Coimbra generation of the
1820s forged not only this common outlook but also a sense of
group unity and identity which was to last until death.
When D. Miguel purged Coimbra of its "liberals"in 1829, at
least 28 Brazilians, both graduates and students, were expelled
from the University (Morais, 1949; Rio de Janeiro, Biblioteca
Nacional, 1943; Almeida Nogueira, 1907, Vol. 2: 6). The
expulsion brought to a close this crucial period in the formation
of the Brazilian elite. The students returned to Brazil where

their enrollment in the newly formed law schools of Sao Paulo

and Pernambuco caused these institutions to flourish from the
start. The treatment of Braziliansat Coimbra and the closing of
that university from 1831 to 1834 broke the dependence of
Brazil upon that institution for higher education. After 1830
few Brazilianschose to go to Coimbra.'
The 120 Brazilian-born students who graduated in law from
Coimbra played an outstanding role in the history of the
Empire. As indicated in Table 4, of the graduating classes of
1824 to 1826 no less than 70 percent reached the peripheral
elite, 59 percent the middle elite, and 15 percent the core elite.
While some of this success was due to the group'~homogeneity
and sense of mutual loyalty, much more was due to conditions
in Brazil itself.
In the years after independence, Brazil slowly created the
apparatus of a modern state but did not at first possess the men
to staff it, particularly since many high officials had returned to
Portugal in 1821. Every new law graduate could virtually pick
and -choose his first job, and advancement was not blocked by
an entrenched older generation monopolizing the best positions.
Even in 1831, a year before a considerable expansion of the
judiciary, there apparently existed some 60 vacant judicial posts
(Lacombe, 1944: 112).
In respect to politics, the situation was very different. Pedro I
depended in his system of government upon a limited circle of
advisers who were both different in outlook and much older
than the Coimbra graduates of the 1820s. Of the 46 men who
served the Emperor as ministers, 25 possessed college degrees
and, for 23 of these, precise or approximate graduation dates
can be established. Of the 23, only two had graduated after
1816, while no less than 15, or two-thirds, had graduated before
1799. Pedro I's exclusion of the group of young graduates from
ministerial power was a principal cause of their increasing
opposition to the Emperor and his advisers.
This opposition, together with a wave of nativism and
liberalism, resulted in Pedro I's abdication in 1831. The former

TABLE4
Comparison of Elite Entry by Law Graduates of Cla
1824-1826, 1849-1851 AND 1874-1876
Class Number of Entry into Peripheral Elite Entry into

Graduates
Number Number Number
entering entering entering
during within during
career 13 yearsa career
1824-26:
Coimbra 64 42 (66%) 29 (45%) 36 (56%)
1849-51:
Pernambuco 202 61 (30%) 26 (13%) 33 (16%)

Sao Paulo 51 17 (33%) 10 (20%) 11 (22%)
Total 253 78 (31%) 36 (14%) 44 (17%)
1874-76:
Pernambuco 143 11 ( 8%)

Sao Paulo 83 8 (10%)
Total 226 19 ( 8%)
a. Thirteen years, the time period between the class of 1876 and the end of the Empire, is used
classes of 1874-1876 and the earlier classes.

Emperor's advisers were discredited and, for a time, even

ostracized. Of the 46 men who were ministers under Pedro I,
only nine were to serve again in that position after his fall. Of
these, only four played prominent parts in the Regency
(1831-1840). Another two took a marginalrole in the Regency,
and the remaining three served briefly after Pedro II's majority
in 1840.10
That a generational shift in power occurred in 1831 is
confirmed by analysis of the men who were ministers during the
Regency. Of the 22 ministers who held degrees, 18, or over
three-fourths, had graduated after 1816. Only one of the
remaining four had graduated before 1799. The contrast with
the reign,of Pedro I could hardly have been greater. Equally, of
these 22 men only four had previously served under Pedro I,
and two of these had been the only post-1816 graduates
appointed minister by the former Emperor.
It was thus that the Coimbra law graduates, while still young
men in their early thirties, established themselves as the
dominant group not only in the judiciary and bureaucracy but
in politics as well. Their supremacy was entrenched and
prolonged by the group's successful cooption into their ranks of
the first graduates from the new Brazilian law schools, some of
them transfer students from Coimbra.' 1
The troubled period of the Regency added a further element
to the group's common outlook. For the group's members, the
preservation of national unity and the prevention of anarchy
and separatism came first, above civil rights, local liberties,
economic development, and social justice. A key figure in this
development was Paulino Jose Soares de Sousa, who had
suffered imprisonment as a student at Coimbrain 1828 and had
completed his degree at Sao Paulo in 1831. As Minister of
Justice in 1841, he guided through parliament the Law of
Judicial Reform which centralized and de-democratized the
police power and made the judiciary the main instrument of
local authority (Soares de Sousa, 1944). In the same period the
national government used the reorganized judiciary to take

TABLE 5
Annual Number of Graduates from Sao Paulo and
Pernambuco Law Academies, 1831-1889
Year Sao Paulo Pernambuco Year Sao Paulo Pernambuco
1831 6 0 1861 70 109

1832 35 41 1862 93 62
1833 56 42 1863 114 67
1834 78 69 1864 78 69
1835 43 59 1865 58 90
1836 33 39 1866 88 55
1837 35 55 1867 67 83
1838 21 22 1868 89 75
1839 18 58 1869 44 97
184o 6 38- 1870 53 93
184i 9 21 1871 29 93
1842 10 26 1872 30 75
1843 12 24 1873 26 97
1844 9 33 1874 26 54
1845 15 28 1875 25 38
1846 11 18 1876 32 51
1847 9 28 1877 28 61
1848 25 46 1878 31 38
1849 14 67 1879 46 52
1850 29 59 1880 33 71
1851 8 76 1881 78 65
1852 22 83 1882 82 74
1853 4T 70 1883 91 122
1854 37 53 1884 1o4 140
1855 34 44 1885 2a 179a
1856 39 57 1886 162 156
1857 60 74 1887 66 144
1858 67 60 1888 54 112
1859 53 81 1889 74 157
1860 53 73 Totals 2660 4023
SOURCES: Data for Sao Paulo from original student matriculation records located in
archive at Sao Paulo Law School, supplemented by Goncalves Maia (1900) where
original records were destroyed or damaged by 1881 fire. Pernambuco data from
Bevilaqua (1927) and Martins (1931).
a. As a result of the major fire at the Sao Paulo Law Academy in 1881, classes were
temporarily suspended and many students who would have entered Sao Paulo went
instead to Pernambuco or waited a year to matriculate at Sao Paulo.

350 _
300 -
250 -
200 -
150
100-
50
1830 1840 1850 186o 187
Figure 1: Annual Total Number of Graduates from Sao Paulo and Pernambuco Law Academie

control of the electoral process. The identification of law with

politics thus received formal recognition, and for a time a
judicial career was the best route to political success.
TABLE6
Provincial Origin of Graduates from Sao Paulo
and Pernambuco Law Academies, 1831-1889
Pernambuco Sao Paulo

Law School Law School
Para/Amazonasa 98 14
Maranh&o 237 30
Piaul 110 11
Ceara 268 23
Rio Grande do Norte 91 3
Paralba do Norte 325 3
Pernambuco 1359 30
Alagoas 208 21
Sergipe 152 20
Bahia 776 137
Goias 6 31
Mato Grosso 9 17
Minas Gerais 62 501
Esplrito Santo 5 10
Rio de Janeiro 186 780
Sao Paulo/Paranga 42 829
Santa Catarina 1 15
Rio Grande do Sul 37 167
a. BecauseAmazonasand Paranadid not become separateprovincesuntil the 1850s,

they are here includedwith the provincesof which they were a partduringalmostall
the periodwhen a graduateduringthe Empirewould havebeen born.

The events following the premature coming of age of Pedro II

in 1840 therefore had the effect of consolidating power in the
hands of the existing elite, a development which resulted in 40
years of stable government but which also produced a'growing
rigidity in the power structure. The supremacy of the law
graduate in the core elite was ensured, and attendance at law
school became the surest road to power. As shown in Table 5
and Figure 1, the two Brazilian law schools produced over
6,500 graduates between 1831 and 1889, with Pernambuco
regularly surpassing Sa'oPaulo in the size of its annual'class after
1840. Most students matriculated between the ages of 17 and
21. Approximately one out of every four students failed to
complete the five-year program for the degree.
Except for a minority of some 10 percent who transferred
from one school to the other in the course of their studies, each
of the schools, as Table 6 indicates, attracted students on a
regional basis."2 This regionalism and the increasing size of the
student body produced an outlook very different from that of
the Coimbra graduates. Students at Pernambuco and Sao Paulo
did not identify emotionally with national unity. Instead they
assumed it and tended to relate most closely to their province
or region and its needs.' 3 Nor did they possess the strong sense
of unity with their fellow students that had characterized the
Coimbra graduates, but identified rather with repu'blicas, or
residences, and with the innumerable clubs that flourished in
the schools (see Bevilaqua, 1927; Vampre, 1924; Barbosa, 1973;
and Almeida Nogueira, 1907).
The national elite never sought to control the size of the elite
pool by regulating the number of students who could enter the
law schools in any year. As a result, and as indicated in Figure
1, wild short-term variations did occur in the number of
students graduating each year, but nonetheless' a secular trend
can be discerned-three waves interspersed with two troughs.
The first wave peaked about 1834, and was composed of the
graduates who were to be absorbed almost at once into the
Coimbra group of the 1820s. The second wave reached its

rather flat height in the 1860s, while the last wave seems to
have peaked in the mid-i 880s.
Of the two declines or troughs, the bottom of the first came
about 1840, probably a reflection of the political and social
troubles of the Regency. The decline permitted the existing
elite to retain a tight hold on the political and judicial system
without antagonizing the new graduates. When the number of
graduates did begin to rise in the late 1840s and early 1850s,
the increase was matched at first by a substantial expansion in
the political and judicial apparatus. Between 1845 and 1860 the
number of seats in the Chamber of Deputies was increased by
17 percent, from 104 to 122. The number of judicial districts
was expanded in the same period by some 60 percent, from
about 115 to about 195. A comparable expansion of the
Treasury and the creation of the Department of Lands and of
the Ministry of Agriculture caused a sizable increase in the
central bureaucracy.
By the late 1850s, however, the situation had begun to
change. National unity and civil peace, all important to the
ruling elite, were not imperatives for the younger generation.
Greater prosperity and a diversification of the economy
increased the number of attractive careers open. Not all of these
were of suitable status for law graduates, although the new
prosperity and the new economic undertaking did produce
much more work for lawyers (advogados). It became quite
common for law graduates to serve a term as district attorney
(promotor pu'blico) and then to set up a private law practice in
their home town.
At the same time, the percentage of law graduates entering
public office was in decline. As shown in Table 4, only three
out of ten graduates of the classes of 1849 to 1851 entered the
peripheral elite, compared to almost seven out of ten from the
classes of 1824 to 1826. Furthermore, the number of graduates
combining a political and a judicial career declined from over
one-third of those with either career to less than one in ten.1 4

Barman, Barman / ROLE OF THE LAW GRADUATE [4411
A generational split was in the making. The young were out

of sympathy with os cardeais, "the cardinals," as the now aging
political elite was aptly dubbed (see Chagas, 1956: 466-474).
This antagonism was exacerbated by the elite's unwise manage-
ment of patronage. Appointments, whether to public positions
or on political slates, were made not on merit but went to those
on whose behalf the greatest influence, -or empenhos, was
exerted. Writing in a semi-official publication, Joaquim Manuel
de Macedo, who was not only a novelist but also a seasoned
politician, denounced "that intervention, demoralizing and
repugnant, but active, importune and audacious, which is
called-empenhos-the undue employment of personal interest"
(Macedo, 1876, Vol. 3: 500).' 5
What the elite did not appreciate, however, was that by giving
in on an individual basis to empenhos it was, in fact, collectively
appointing its own offspring to the available positions. A
candidate whose father was already in the system was two to
three times more likely to enter the system than if his father
were not.' 6 The length of time needed to enter the peripheral
elite did not rise, it was the percentage of law graduates entering
which dropped so sharply.'7 Once inside the system, the
chances of advancing to the middle elite and to the core elite
were almost as great for the law graduates of the early 1850s as
they had been for those 25 years before.' 8
It is not surprising that denunciations of filhotismo e
oligarquia, nepotism and oligarchy, multiplied as the ranks of
the disappointed grew. What is surprising is the insensitivity of
the elite to the situation. In 1851 Paulino Jose Soares de Sousa
wrote unconcernedly to his son, then a student at Sao Paulo,
that "we have piles of bachareis around here and no one pays
them -any attention" (Flory, 1975: 691). Twelve years later, in
1863,- Paulino Jose hotly denounced his political opponents as
wanting "to substitute what they have termed filhotismo and
olgarquia with a true and far greater neoptism and oligarchy"
(Soares de Sousa, 1944: 619). In the intervening period he had

got his son appointed a diplomatic attache in Paris and elected a

national deputy, both before the age of 23!
In such circumstances, the advocates of Republicanism found
a ready audience. The Republican Manifesto of 1870 was,
indeed, as much a protest by the young against unemployment
and blocked advancement as it was a political document. The
nucleus of a potential Republican movement had been formed
as early as 1860 around the newspaper A A tualidade, staffed by
a group of young law graduates. This group was strengthened by
the adhesion of much of the Sao Paulo graduating classes of
1869 and 1870. The signatories of the Republican Manifesto
included representatives of both groups.
While a very real political idealism, inspired largely by the
resurgence of Republicanism in France in the 1860s and by a
mood of radicalism in Brazil resulting from the ParaguayanWar,
underlay the signing of the Manifesto, it must be recognized, as
contemporaries did recognize,"9 that the discontent repre-
sented in the Republican movement was fueled by generational
blockage and by the lack of political recognition and employ-
ment among men of talent. This is evidenced by the ease with
which, in the late 1870s, the most important signers of the
Manifesto were coopted back into political orthodoxy by the
offer of good positions.
The elite, aroused at last to the dangers of the situation, did
not limit itself to wooing the Republican leadership. The Law
of Judicial Reform of September 20, 1871, made possible an
increase in the size of the judiciary which in the next four years
resulted in a 50 percent increase in the number of judicial
districts from approximately 230 to 350. At the same time the
Law of August 6, 1873, raised the number of courts of appeal
in the Empire from four to 11. These two laws meant that some
20 district judges, while over 120 new positions of juiz de
direito were created, mostly at the bottom range.
Other measures to conciliate the disaffected were also taken,
but if the crisis were averted it was due to other, more

fortuitous circumstances. The prolonged war with Paraguay in

the 1860s had so drastically reduced the number of students in
law school that the seventies saw a dramatic decline in
graduates. At the same time death and retirement began to
decimate the ranks of the original elite, now very old men,
gradually opening positions for so long blocked. When Lafay-
ette Rodrigues Pereira, a signatory of the Republican Manifesto,
accepted the position of Minister of Justice in 1878, the danger
appeared to be averted.
Yet, by that date, the relationship between the national
political elite and the law graduates had become essentially
unstable. On the surface the dominance of the law graduate
remained complete. Since 1865 four out of every five appoint-
ments to the Senate and Cabinet had gone to law graduates. In
popular estimation the law graduates were omnipresent. As a
character in a successful play of the period remarked: "If a law
degree were a job, there would be little unemployment in
Brazil" (Franca, 1883: Act 2, Scene 9). Unemployment, there
lay the rub. The law graduates possessed high prestige, but a
sufficiency of employment of equal status did not exist, and the
law graduate could not demean himself by doing lesser work.
Over a quarter of the students who graduated in law from
Coimbra, Pernambuco, and Sao Paulo in the period of 1776 to
1889 did so in the last decade of the Empire. The supply of
public employment could not keep up with this increase:
indeed, it fell far behind. While the economy was fairly
prosperous in the last 20 years of the Empire, the private sector
did not expand at nearly the same rate as did the supply of
graduates and so could not offer a sufficiency of openings of
the right status. In politics, moreover, the law graduates were
finding that, whatever the popular belief, their supremacy was
being challenged by the engineer and by the doctor in medicine
(see Table 1). By the end of the Empire only 8 percent of the
graduates of 1874-1876 had entered the peripheral elite,
whereas in the same number of years after graduation 48

percent of the classes of 1824-1826 and 14 percent of the

classes of 1849-1851 had achieved such status. No wonder
many of the law graduates felt aggrieved and alienated. Their
absolute indifference to the overthrow of the Empire on
November 15, 1889 and their willingness to experiment with
the Republic is all too understandable.
The elite of Imperial Brazil was, then, constructed around a
generation of men who, graduatingfrom Coimbrain the 1820s,
increased their number and their power by assimilating the first
graduates from the new Brazilianlaw schools. In the early years
a sufficiency of public employment existed for all law gradu-
ates, who monopolized at the same time both politics and the
judiciary. The probability of elite membership was conferred by
the mere act of graduation from law school.
By the late 1850s the number of law graduates began to
exceed the supply of public employment. A law degree no
longer sufficed of itself to secure entry into the elite. While
some graduates were content to make their careers as attorneys
or as businessmen, many still saw public office as the only
worthy employment. The role of influence became decisive in
the acquisition of public employment, and the successful were
those linked by blood to the existing elite. Elite recruitment
was becoming increasingly closed.
By the end of the Empire, the number of law graduates was
so great that the degree, while still prestigious, was almost
valueless of itself. The selection of elite members, now totally
divorced from the act of graduation, was determined by other
methods-some of which we have identified here, others which
remain to be investigated. While the expectation of elite
membership was still raised for those graduatingin law and thus
entering the elite pool, the hard reality was that few achieved it.
The increasing disillusionment with the Empire can in large part
by explained by this split between expectation and reality.20

NOTES
1. For details of the machine-readable data base we have developed, the

programs employed for its analysis, and the sources of information on which it is
based, see our article in the forthcoming Historical Statistics issue of the Latin
AmericanResearchReview.
2. In the interest of clarity, a number of categories in the middle elite have been
simplified in the text:
(a) The high command of the Army and Navy is for our purposes composed of
the four ranksof marechaldo exercito, almirante,tenente general,and vice
almirante.
(b) The "most important provinces" are those named as first-class provinces by
Decree no. 1305 of August 18, 1852. These were Rio de Janeiro, Bahia,
Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul, and Mato Grosso. We have, however,
considered Mato Grosso to be a minor province since its presidents were
never, despite the intentions of the decree, of the same status as those of the
other first-class provinces.
(c) When death caused a vacancy in the Senate, an election was held in the
relevant province. The three candidates with the most votes composed the
"triple list" from which the Emperor selected the new Senator. Since
candidates had to be aged 40, possessed of "knowledge, capacity, and good
character, with... services to the country," to stand for the Senate implied a
certain elite status. For example, Joaquim Nabuco, himself an experienced
politician of the Empire, complained that Jose Ildefonso de Sousa Ramos,
when appointed president of Pernambuco in 1850, "was not yet even of a
standing to run for the Senate" (Nabuco, 1936, Vol. 2: 104).
3. Substitute deputies were, save for the period 1857-1860, those who were
unsuccessful in the general elections but, being proximate in votes, replaced those
elected deputy when the latter left the Chamber of Deputies either permanently (e.g.,
upon death or becoming Senator) or temporarily (e.g., upon being named to a post
away from Rio de Janeiro). In the Chamber of 1857-1860 special substitute deputies
were elected, many of whom were scions of important provincial families fresh out of
law school.
4. Through their use only of Fonseca (1951), Pang and Seckinger (1972: 219)
seriously underestimate the number of graduates in the period 1800-1830 and
mistakenly take the birthplaces of the 180 law graduates listed in Fonseca to be the
totality of locations from which Brazilian students were sent to Coimbra.
5. Our Coimbra data has one significant limitation, which is gradually being
remedied on an individual basis. While the most consistent criterion for identifying
students from Brazil is the fact of birth in Brazil, it is not infallible. The children of
judges and government officials born while their fathers were doing a turn of duty in
Brazil had no identification with the country beyond their birth and perhaps a short
residence. On the other hand, some of the students born in Portugal possessed no

identification with that country, since they were born there due only to their father's
temporary presence in Portugal on business, taking a degree, and the like, or since
they were born in Portugal prior to their family's permanent migration to Brazil.
6. While at least 42 percent of the students entering Coimbra between 1817 and
1830 had a sibling relationship with another student, no more than 14 percent were
the sons of earlier Brazilian-born students. Even though a part of these students had
Portuguese-born fathers who may have attended Coimbra, the failure of Brazilian-
born students of the period 1771-1816 to send their sons to the university does
suggest a fluid socioeconomic situation in late colonial Brazil.
7. Of the 122 judges named to the highest legal body during the Empire, the
Supreme Tribunal of Justice, 37, or 30 percent, were born in Bahia. The high point
of Bahian supremacy came in 1860-1861 when 13 of the 17 judges were natives of
that province. A majority of the tribunal were bahiano throughout the period
1857-1870 and again in 1876 (Lago, 1940).
8. Father's occupation is, however, given for only a minority of the Coimbra
law graduates, so our findings can be no more than suggestive. We have excluded the
occupation of judge because of the complications mentioned in note 5.
9. All five students of the 1831 graduating class from Sao Paulo were Coimbra
transfer students, as were almost a third of the 35 students graduating the next year.
Twelve of the 41 members of the Pernambuco class of 1832, the first to graduate
from that school, came from Coimbra.
After Coimbra reopened in 1834, five Brazilians on average matriculated annually
with no more than 13 ever entering in a single year. It is our suspicion that many of
these students were Brazilian-born sons of Portuguese merchants trading in Brazil:
certainly almost half of the students from 1834 onwards came from Rio de Janeiro.
Slightly less than a quarter were from the northern provinces of Para, Maranhao, and
Amazonas, which were physically almost as proximate to Portugal as to some parts of
Brazil and which, before the steamship, had better communications with Portugal
than with the rest of Brazil.
10. Since those who graduated in the 1790s were in their late fifties and early
sixties in 1831, they were mature and experienced men who found their peremptory
exclusion from executive power not only unexpected but humiliating. It is this
exclusion which explains many of the events of the early Regency including the
surprising strength of the Restaurador Party, which wanted to bring back Pedro I. It
was also a group from this generation which helped to engineer Pedro II's premature
declaration of age in 1840.
11. It would appear, however, that the later classes of the 1830s contained a
rising proportion of those who would be Liberals in the 1840s or Progressistas in the
1860s.
12. Our data concerning matriculation is limited to those students from Sao
Paulo for whom we were able to consult the original records (see Table 5, notes on
sources).
13. Of those students from the classes of 1824-1826, 1849-185 1, and 1874-1876
who served as Deputy or Senator, the two national positions elected by province, 80
out of a total of 94, or 85 percent, represented their native province. For the three
sets of classes the respective percentages are 78, 88, and 90, which could suggest that

identification with the provinces rather than with the nation increased as the Empire
progressed. This evidence is in conflict with the thesis of Pang and Seckinger (1972),
which views the national elite primarily as a group of "mandarins" and which
postulates that, during the mandarins' rise in the judicial and administrative structure,
their provincial ties were deliberately removed by those in power above them.
14. We have defined a political career as including at least one position as
national substitute deputy, provincial president, or higher; a judicial career as
including appointment as juiz de direito, provincial chief of police, or higher. Out of
the 46 graduates from the three Coimbra classes of 1824-1826, 50 percent had a
political career, 58 percent a judicial career, and 34 percent both. However, the
percentage for those with a judicial career and for both may well be low, since we
have no data on judicial appointments prior to the 1832 reform. Of the 253 Brazilian
law graduates of 1849-1851, 23 percent had political careers, 27 percent judicial
careers, and 8 percent both.
15. Examples of the use of empenhos abound. See Instituto Historico e
Geografico Brasileiro, Arquivo Senador Nabuco, Lata 383, Pasta 2, Letter of the
Marquesa de Santos to Nabuco, 16.12.1855; Instituto Historico e Geografico
Brasileiro, Arquivo do Instituto, Lata 439, Pasta 17, Letters of the Marques de Santa
Cruz to Joaquim Pinto de Campos, 13.10,1857, 18.10.1857, and 22.10.1857; and
Arquivo Historico do Itamarati, Arquivo do Visconde do Rio Branco, Lata 317, Maco
1, Letter of Joao da Silva Carrao to Rio Branco, 8.11.1853.
16. The extent to which favoritism was exhibited toward the sons of those having
political or judicial careers is a crucial but as yet incomplete aspect of our research.
Our present data, limited to those graduates from Sao Paulo for which we have the
original records or other data with father's name, indicates that from the mid-Empire
test classes of 1849-1851, 37 percent of those with known nonpolitical, nonjudicial
fathers themselves had political and/or judicial careers while 88 percent of those with
known political and/or judicial fathers had political and/or judicial careers.
17. Using our test classes of 1824-1826 and 1849-1851, we find that of those
who at some time in their career would enter at least the peripheral elite, 69 percent
of the earlier classes had so done within the shorter 13-year period as compared with
46 percent of the later classes. However, the earlier figure is misleading. One of our
criteria for entry into the peripheral elite is appointment as appeal judge, or
desembargador.In the early period it was possible to obtain such appointment with a
minimum of service. By the mid-Empire the time which it was necessary to serve
within the lower judiciary before being made appeal judge had risen to a minimum of
20 years. If the earlier figures are revised to exclude all those who obtained entry into
the peripheral elite within 13 years only through appointment as appeal judge, the
percentage drops from 69 to 52. In short, if the figures are revised to compensate for
a differing judicial system over which the individual graduates had no control, of all
those who would enter the peripheral elite during their careers, in both periods
roughly half did so within 13 years.
18. Of the Coimbra classes of 1824-1826, 86 percent of those in the peripheral
elite advanced to the middle elite, as compared with 56 percent from the classes of
1849-1851. Of those in the middle elite, 25 percent from both the earlier and later
classes rose to the core elite.

19. See, for example, the cartoon in the December 21, 1872 issue of 0 Mosquito,
a weekly review by no means hostile to the Republicans.
20. It would be ungracious and unscholarly to close this article without
mentioning the chapter "The Rise of the College Graduate and the Mulatto" in
Freyre (1968), a work which is, more or less, an analysis of Brazilian society during
the Empire. Building on the remarks of Gilberto Amado and Sylvio Romero, Freyre
grasped, with his usual insight, that the college graduates played an essential role in
nineteenth-century Brazil, but his blunt correlation of "white" elite with "dominant
plantation group" and of "mulatto" graduates with "deprived but rising urban
group" is too crude and simplistic to be analytically useful. Moreover, in
contradiction to the evidence presented in this article, Freyre does not see the
graduate as becoming dominant until well after Pedro II's accession in 1840, a
dominance which he attributed to the Emperor's personal preferences.
A variation of Freyre's dichotomy between established rural elite and rising
bacharel group is postulated in Flory (1975), but not only does Flory fail to use his
own concept successfully but the evidence he presents contradicts it. The author's
correlation of the bacharel with the juiz de direito, his incomprehension of the nature
and development of political parties in Imperial Brazil, and his total failure to
investigate the institutional development of the magistracy after 1849 vitiates what is
otherwise a useful article.
In addition, the recent doctoral dissertation by Carvalho (1974), unavailable at
time of writing, contains a chapter entitled "Elite Socialization: Higher Education."
REFERENCES
ALMEIDA NOGUEIRA, J. L. (1907) A Academia de S. Paulo: Tradiq6es e

Reminiscencias. Sao Paulo: Typographia Vanorden.
BARBOSA, R. (1973) Correspond&ncia:Primeiros Tempos, Curso Juri'dico, Colegas e
Parentes. Rio de Janeiro: Casa Rui Barbosa.
BEVILAQUA, C, (1927) Historia da Faculdade de Direito do Recife. Rio de Janeiro:
LivrariaFrancisco Alves.
Brazil, Arquivo Nacional (1962) Organizagoes e Programas Ministeriais: Regime
Parlamentar no Imperio. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional.
Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estastistica (1873) Recenseamento da Populagao do
Imperio do Brazil a que se Procedeu no dia 1. de Agosto de 1872. Rio de Janeiro.
Brazil, Senado (1886) Noticia dos Senadores do Imperio do Brazil. Rio de Janeiro.
Imprensa Nacional.
CARVALHO, J. M. (1974) "Elite and state-building in imperial Brazil." Unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, Stanford University.
CHAGAS, P. P. (1956) Teofilo Ottoni: Ministro do Povo. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria
Sao Jose.

Barman,Barman/ ROLEOF THELAWGRADUATE[449]
FLORY, T. (1975) "Judicial politics in nineteenth-century Brazil." Hispanic Amer.

Hist. Rev. 55 (November): 664-692.
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pela faculdade de direito de S. Paulo e dos lentes e directores effectivos ate
1900." Revista da Faculdade de Direito de Sao Paulo 8 (Sao Paulo): 207-291.
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MACEDO, J. M. (1876) Brazilian Biographical Annual. Rio de Janeiro: Typographia
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Roderick Barmanis Assistant Professorin the Departmentsof History and

Hispanic Studies at the Universityof British Columbiaand a graduateof
Cambridgeand the Universityof Californiaat Berkeley.
Jean Barmanholds degrees from Harvardand Berkeley and is currentlya

researchassociate in their joint project on the Prosopographyof Imperial
Brazilfunded by the CanadaCouncil.


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The Role of the Law Graduate in the Political Elite of Imperial Brazil

Author(s): Roderick Barman and Jean Barman

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THE ROLE OF THE LAW GRADUATE

By the application of fresh analytical approaches such as

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taken as the principal causes for the collapse of the Brazilian

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Qualitative research indicates two restrictions to this working

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homem letrado, a bacharel, the possessor of an academic degree.

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Period in which served Total Law Medical Civilian Degree

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Canon or civil Medicine Mathematics -Philo

Total 1489 341 22

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graduates dominated both politics and the judiciary from 1831

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Years North Northeast Northeast Center Center Center

1771-75 0 15 (14%) 18 (17%) 3 ( 3%) 19 (18%) 38 (37%

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While in the early years Minas Gerais supplied the plurality of

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to bear. The publication in April 1823 by a Brazilian student of

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their enrollment in the newly formed law schools of Sao Paulo

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Class Number of Entry into Peripheral Elite Entry into

Coimbra 64 42 (66%) 29 (45%) 36 (56%)

Pernambuco 202 61 (30%) 26 (13%) 33 (16%)

Pernambuco 143 11 ( 8%)

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Emperor's advisers were discredited and, for a time, even

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Year Sao Paulo Pernambuco Year Sao Paulo Pernambuco

1831 6 0 1861 70 109

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1830 1840 1850 186o 187

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control of the electoral process. The identification of law with

Pernambuco Sao Paulo

Rio Grande do Norte 91 3

Paralba do Norte 325 3

Bahia 776 137

Minas Gerais 62 501

Rio de Janeiro 186 780

Sao Paulo/Paranga 42 829

Rio Grande do Sul 37 167

a. BecauseAmazonasand Paranadid not become separateprovincesuntil the 1850s,

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The events following the premature coming of age of Pedro II

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A generational split was in the making. The young were out

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got his son appointed a diplomatic attache in Paris and elected a

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fortuitous circumstances. The prolonged war with Paraguay in

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percent of the classes of 1824-1826 and 14 percent of the

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1. For details of the machine-readable data base we have developed, the