This study focuses on the Brazilian Empire's Conservative Party and its success and failure in constructing a representative, constitutional monarchy to defend a slaveholding plantation society.
"Needell's monumental work on Brazil's second empire makes a major contribution to our understanding of the monarchy, slavery, imperial politics and the importance of ideology in Brazilian history. The product of many years of painstaking research, the book fills the longstanding need for a sophisticated political and ideological history of the period-a subject that languished too long in relative neglect. Needell has succeeded in bringing the world of imperial politicians to us in its many complexities. His judgments are sober and balanced, his analyses persuasive, and his extensive documentation a rich mine for further research. In sheer scope his examination of powerful political families, their kinship and clientage networks, and their roles in the history of parties and parliament makes this a foundational work for all subsequent scholarship on Brazil."
