ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes the dispute regarding the moral and intellectual direction of the modernization process in Grão-Pará in the 1870s and 1880s, between imperial tradition and scientific politics. Conservatives and Catholics, Liberals and Republicans presented their political projects of conservation and change in the structures of state organization. Based on documentary research and literature review, I argue that there was a polarization between tradition and faith versus science and reason, which faced the question of modernity: the two trenches, whose roles in the press and in the formation of public opinion were privileged, projected, with their internal differences, progress, and civilization in the region. I conclude that the coordinates of the political debate on the civilization of nineteenth-century Amazonia lay between the blessings of Pius IX, the scepter of a third reign, and the blessings of secularization, abolition, and federation.
Keywords:
Amazon; Modernization; Civilization; Imperial tradition; Scientific policy