The Minotaur of Greek legend was an implausible hybrid, half man and half bull. Also a hybrid, according to Fernando Uricoechea, was the administrative apparatus of the Brazilian empire. O Minotauro Imperial, originally a 1976 University of California, Berkeley, dissertation entitled “The Patrimonial Foundations of the Brazilian Bureaucratic State: Landlords, Prince, and Militias in the XIX Century,” examines the relationship of the centralized bureaucratic administration of the Brazilian state with that controlled locally by the dominant classes. Basing his analysis on the sociological categories of Max Weber, Uricoechea defines the administrative system of the Brazilian empire as a patrimonial bureaucracy. Patrimony and bureaucracy are usually considered opposing ideal types. The empire’s administrative apparatus was patrimonial in that it entrusted local administration and security to the National Guard, led by local landowners. Since the National Guard was unpaid, its employment necessarily institutionalized the patrimonial concept of the administrative obligations inherent in social status.
O Minotauro Imperial is important because it offers a fresh approach to the administrative history of Brazil, throws light on the empire’s National Guard, a largely ignored subject, and, not least significantly, demonstrates how historical research may be given direction by social science theory. Uricoechea also makes effective use of comparative history by contrasting the role of the National Guard in the Province of Rio Grande do Sul, where it served as a vital frontier defense force, with its purely administrative role in the rest of Brazil. He also refers to patriarchal structures and administrative systems in other parts of the world, particularly Spanish America. Finally, O Minotauro Imperial is well documented. Uricoechea has based his research on extensive national and provincial correspondence concerning the National Guard, and seems particularly sensitive to the subtleties and nuances of official exchange.
The faults of O Minotauro Imperial are relatively minor. The book might have been improved by more specific reference to the legal organization and administrative duties of the National Guard. Like many who employ social science theory, Uricoechea has garnished his sentences with too many modifiers for easy reading. He also tends to develop his evidence ponderously and at excessive length. A more succinct exposition would have been equally effective. Nevertheless, O Minotauro Imperial stands as a successful combination of social science theory and historical research and as a welcome addition to the historiography of nineteenth-century Brazil.
