The title of Carvalho’s work, “Shadow Theater,” reflects the empire’s politics, highlighting the opaque aspects of the conflict between the imperial center and periphery and between the constitutional fiction and the political forces at work, played out with all the subtleties of theater. To understand the dynamics of imperial politics, he argues that one should look beyond the formal and the apparent.
Of the five chapters of the book, the first two (imperial budget and abolition) were written for this volume: the last three (land policy, the Council of State, and elections and parties) were published elsewhere in the early 1980s. A basic theme in the first two chapters is hegemonic struggle between the formal and the informal, or the state and the economic elites. The theme of the last three chapters is the confrontation of ideologies and institutions of the formal and the informal (the real). Those combine in an imaginative and thought-provoking approach to imperial politics. Indirectly, Carvalho raises the intriguing question of who really ruled the empire?
Carvalho’s treatment of the Council of State exemplifies his solid original research and analysis. While rejecting the council as the “fifth power” of the constitution, Carvalho perceptively argues that it could shape the course of ministries. Often acting on personal convictions, not on partisan principles, councillors advised the emperor on a variety of issues—legislative, executive, and judicial. Pedro II did not always accept the advice, however. Obsessed with the necessity to “civilize” Brazil, the emperor and his councillors at times upheld standards unrealistic for an empire of slaves, illiteracy, and extremes of wealth and poverty. Hence, Carvalho suggests that there was a dysfunction of the formal system, because it was unable to relate to the informal—a clever explanation of the monarchy’s fall.
Clearly written and well argued, the book breaks new ground for the political and social history of the empire. It is a good sequel to Carvalho’s earlier A construção da ordem: A elite política imperial (Brasília, 1980).
