Reconfiguração dos espaços e do tempo e alteração do fundamento de legitimidade do direito no primeiro quartel do século XIX brasileiro

Abstract

This paper approaches the historical transformations in the structure of public spaces and in the time’s formal configuration in the first quarter of the 19th Century in Brazil. To do this, it discusses the usages of concepts like “public opinion”, “liberal”, “liberalism”, “federal”, “federalism”, “nation”, “republic”, “republicans”, as well as the changes in the structure and in the meanings of these concepts. The background thesis is that these transformations are crucial to the change of the legitimacy’s foundation of Law in the transition to the Modernity. From a methodological point of view, the historical methodology is offered by conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) and by the Cambridge contextualism. The main historical sources are texts of Friar Joaquim do Amor Divino Caneca and the manuscripts and printed pamphlets published from 1820 to 1823, apart from official documents and secondary sources.