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Upright Citizens in Criminal Records: Investigations in Cachoeira and Geremoabo, Brazil, 1780-1836

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Patricia Aufderheide*
Affiliation:
Chicago, Illinois

Extract

Criminal justice records provide the historian with a wealth of data on social deviance, and on the role of the judiciary in defining and controlling it. They can as well comment on the most invisible group for the social historian: the “innocent bystanders,” the respectable folk who distinguish themselves neither by their power and influence nor by their deviance. This essay illustrates the value of one kind of judicial data, local criminal investigations in Brazil, to provide information on the working citizens of a community. Changes in the characteristics of that population may be indicative of wider social stress in the Brazilian Independence period.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1981

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References

1 In the colonial period, the judge was usually the juiz da fora, with other officials substituting, such as the oldest member of the city council, or the sargento-mor. After 1832, the juiz de direito or the juiz de paz conducted the investigation. Since different judges presided at different devassas, bias from one judge’s choices is eliminated.

2 Arquivo do Estado da Bahia, Cartas para Sua Magestade, livro 139, p. 327 (5 September, 1797).

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