This article aims at understanding the main changes in the content of concepts of centralization and federalism along the 19th century, combing them with the lines of interpretation of the Brazilian political thought. In the centralizing thought there was the precedence of public interest in confrontation with private interests. Such subordination does not arise from realizing an existing delay in the society which would be up to the state to correct by duty means of authoritarian instruments, but rather from the legitimacy that this body has had towards society. The federalist thought was marked by the idea of individual interest established by the search of the citizen's freedom and the autonomy of provinces. We have tried to interpret it by means of historical context changes.
Political thought; Centralization; Federalism; Authoritarianism; Americanism; Iberism