The new style
etiquette during the exile of the Portuguese court in Rio de Janeiro (1808–1821)
pp. 125-159
in: Tatiana Savoia Landini (ed), Norbert Elias and empirical research, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
Norbert Elias"s figurational sociology has served as the theoretical framework for the research that I developed on the rich and intense moment in history when the Portuguese court moved to Rio de Janeiro between 1808 and 1821 at the apex of the Napoleonic Wars. This unique event forever changed the relationship between the ancient metropolis and its richest former colony, coming to culminate in the subsequent year in the return of the king of Portugal, in the definitive political rupture between the two countries. In these thirteen years, under the logic of a typical Ancient Regime European court society, now installed in the tropics, there happened the rapprochement between two different social configurations: the traditional Portuguese nobility who migrated with the king and the wealthy capitalists residing in Rio de Janeiro, among whom stand out the slave traders. The habitus of individuals in both configurations changed irrevocably, and this rapprochement, very often conflictive, resulted in the redefinition of the elites who would take up the work of building the national state in Brazil after independence in 1822.
