This paper analyzes the impacts and dynamics of the appropriation of constitutionalism in the province of Minas Gerais, between 1820 and 1822. To this end, it focus on two kinds of priorities that, at the context of the Ancient Regime's crisis and its overcoming, oriented trends and political views of the local groups: respectively, the preservation of old political and economic autonomies, and the established mechanisms of reiteration of social hierarchy. At the context of Independence, these priorities have been politicized by directing the formation of a moderate liberal posture in denial to the two supposedly threatening extremes: the risk of despotism and anarchy, whose meanings are to be qualified in this article.
Minas Gerais; constitucionalism; liberalism