Abstract

FERRARO, Alceu Ravanello. Educação, classe, gênero e voto no Brasil imperial: Lei Saraiva - 1881. Educ. Rev. [online]. 2013, n.50, pp.181-206. ISSN 0104-4060.

The paper discusses the electoral reform almost at the end of the Empire that introduced the direct vote in Brazil, known as the Saraiva Law (1881). It focuses on two issues that are interwoven: the position taken by Brazilian liberals regarding access for the working class, illiterates, and women to the vote, and the use of the liberal ideas of John Stuart Mill, the English Liberal, by the Brazilian liberal politicians in conducting the aforementioned reform. From the theoretical-methodological perspective of Social History or Historical Sociology, and based on the debates held in the Chamber of Deputies, as recorded in the Anais (Proceedings) (1879-1880), and philosophical-political texts of the aforementioned English liberal, the study shows how Brazilian deputies: a) radicalized the economic criterion of Stuart Mill, creating harsher mechanisms to prove minimum income (census) to vote; b) incorporated the Millian criterion of exclusion of illiterates from the right to vote into the new Law, in a country with more than 80% illiterates, lacking schools, and without mandatory schooling at that time; and c) ignored the proposal by the English author of extending the right to vote to the women. It also shows that the result of the reform was a huge step backwards, in terms of popular political participation, without the promised advance in schooling.

Keywords : Education; Class; Gender; Vote; Empire.

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