(Post-)Koloniales Regieren in einer imperialen Hauptstadt:: Die Polizeiintendanz in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821

Abstract

(Post-)Colonial Governance in an Imperial Metropolis: The Police Intendancy of Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821

The transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in 1807/1808 signaled the emergence of a new spatio-political order within the Portuguese Empire. This transfer implied that the imperial center shifted from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, transforming the city within a couple of years from a “typical” colonial city into a “tropical Versaille.” Through an analysis of the city’s Police Intendancy, an institution that substantially shaped this “metropolization process” (Schultz), and by drawing on archival police documents, this article offers an analysis of the changing patterns of governance and rule that accompanied this transition process in Rio de Janeiro. After locating the Police Intendancy within the overall workings of imperial governmentality, the article addressed the following questions: Were local authorities consciously aware that colonial practices had to be changed after the transfer of the Court? Which problems and paradoxes accompanied the emergence of new technologies of power that accompanied the shift from a colonial to a metropolitan, and thus post-colonial, space?