Abstract
The process of political rupture between Brazil and Portugal established in the province of Grand Para a state of uncertainty that should have been faced. Elevated to the status of Capitania during the colonial period and recognized as a Province by the Cortes of Lisbon, Rio Negro was not included among the Brazilian Empire administrative units under the 1824 Constitution. Its condition would be set only in 1833, when the Brazilian Criminal Code downgraded Rio Negro's legal status to a judicial district subjected to the Pará Province. Even before this official confirmation began to appear in the newly installed Brazilian Imperial Parliament projects to recover the Rio Negro Province status, a movement that reveals some important aspects of the Empire's political and administrative organization in its early years. The article aims to examine the debates on the first project with that objective, presented by the Archbishop of Bahia in 1826 and discussed more deeply two years later. So the article tries to analyze the problem of the Empire territorial organization during the critical beginning of its political existence.
Keywords:
political representation; legislative power; territoriality; monarchy; parliamentary debates; First Reign