"...E estará nas atribuições policiais maltratar e inutilizar a propriedade alheia?" : ordem pública e poder senhorial a partir de impressos maranhenses (1850-1861)

Abstract

During the 19th century, with the construction of the National State, the establishment of public order and the bureaucratization of institutions, the public power started to interfere in several spheres. Among them, I understand that the most emblematic is slavery. The masters of enslaved began to live in this context with a public order regulating the institution and their sphere of power. However, the onslaught of public order on the power of the enslaved masters was not necessarily made as a clash between antagonistic forces, because in the treatment given to the enslaved, there was not, as a rule, an opposition of interests between the Justice of the 1800s and the slave elites, the collision points were specific. In this context, the present work seeks to investigate the different expressions of the public order that regulated the slave institution through the analysis of articles published by the newspapers from Maranhão, A Imprensa and O Observador, between the years of 1850 and 1861. In addition to the press, codes of posture and legislation of the period were used as sources to understand how public order under construction has a direct connection with slavery and how the elites from Maranhão represented and/or used an apparatus that was still undefined and under construction.