Law and Diplomacy in the Tempo Saquarema:

territorial sovereignty, political borders, and navigation in the Amazon (1849-1864)

Abstract

This article is the result of reflections that originated from the problematization of the documentation that registered the articulation between the internal and external movements of the Executive of the Empire of Brazil around the process of asserting the country's political borders in the region that today is understood as part of the Amazon. We seek to understand how — in the mid-19th century — those actions were directly associated with the project of consolidation of the Imperial State, under the direction and hegemony of Saquarema intellectuals. In this sense, we base ourselves on the readings carried out by conservatives about History, the Right of possession of confining territories, and the free navigation of the Amazon River in order to understand them as a constituent part of an idea of ​​a centralized and cohesive Nation, whose important basis was the defense of the dimension and uniqueness of the territory, with a will to defend its domain and control.