ABSTRACT
Starting at the Second Reign, the geography of power was designed so that the elites of the Court, accompanied by the political elites of the North of Bahia and Pernambuco (agricultural), had considerable political weight. In addition to politics, Brazilian economics were decisive for a greater regional differentiation in the country. For example, between 1860 and 1870, there was an increase in coffee production and a decrease in the production of sugar and cotton. Thus, instead of the elites of the North, the ones of the South began to have higher incomes and, consequently, greater national political weight. This work aimed to analyze the place of the Amazon Region in the context of the deepening of regional differences in Brazil during the Second Reign while highlighting the political aspects of this process. Supported by documentation, such as the Proceedings of the Brazilian Parliament, journals and rare and reference works on national politics, this work is relevant due to the analysis and historical understanding it provides of the place the states of Pará and Amazonas occupied in the country and of the creation of a local political regionalism in the period. The conclusions reached indicate that the discourse of an underprivileged region that had been abandoned by the national government gained greater proportions in the Amazonian North, especially as a result of the struggle the political elites waged in search of recognition and fulfillment of the region’s demands. Moreover, the regional status built around the word Amazon also derived from the regionalism developed in this area of the country.
Keywords:
Regional differentiation; Brazil; Amazon