Festivities and Power: Celebration, Politics and Culture in 18th Century Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

Employing a theoretical apparatus composed of authors such as Bakhtin, Kantor, Maravall, Bentes Monteiro, Tinhorão, and Mary Del Priore, we observed that the Metropolitan political power in 18th-century Portuguese America employed festive practices originating from Iberian and global culture in which fireworks were the summit of people’s amazement. In Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the Viceroyalty as well as the Atlantic axis of Portuguese maritime empire during the crisis of the colonial system, the festivities and their traditions strengthened loyalties, contained tensions, and restored order in the context of cultural interconnection and monarchical power.