Orders, Oaths, and Authority: Political communication with the Provisional Government Juntas in the portuguese empire (1821-1823)

Abstract

This article examines the correspondence sent by the Ministry of the Kingdom to the Provisional Government Juntas in the Portuguese overseas territories between 1821 and 1823, aiming to explore the dynamics of authority-building during the constitutional transition. Based on the transcription and analysis of over two-hundred documents, it identifies the administrative circuits, normative instructions, and political rituals mobilized to proclaim, swear allegiance to, and implement the liberal order in the colonies. The Juntas are shown not as mere executors of metropolitan orders, but as political actors who negotiated loyalties, disputed legitimacy, and adapted the constitutional language to local realities. Through administrative writing (letters, formulas, silences), plural practices of power emerge, shaped by tensions between synodal tradition and institutional innovation. The article proposes a micropolitical and decentralized reading of the Portuguese constitutional experience, attentive to documentary pragmatics and authority disputes on the imperial periphery.