A consolidação do Império através da formação da Armada imperial na província rio-grandense com base na Companhia de Aprendizes-Marinheiros de Rio Grande (RS) (1860-1885)

Abstract

The historiographical works elaborated in the last decades, on the recruitment in the Imperial Navy, generally focused on the impact of the military action on the life in the provinces. Generally, researchers tended to emphasize the violent execution of recruitment by the Imperial State and its coercive modalities, and how these activities affected the direct relationship between sectors of the population and the Empire. On that note, and with the definitive rupture of the alliance with Portugal in 1822, seditious and lusophobic movements, taking advantage of the climate, emerged in several provinces of the Empire, and lasted for almost 30 years. To combat these movements, the Empire (re)created the professional Navy to be able and ready for future moments of tension. Although it had obsolete and scrapped ships, which were mainly manned by improvised sailors, foreign and unprepared, this Navy was one of the results of various political battles on the question of the consolidation of the Empire. This process of consolidation led to the creation of the Imperial Sailors, and later to the Companies of Apprentices Sailors, among them the Company of Apprentices of Rio Grande do Sul (1861). An important event for the city of Rio Grande, reported in the pages of the main newspaper of the city O Diario do Rio Grande, that by having a harbor in expansion, contributed to form the Navy in that region. The installation of the Captaincy Harbor (1846) and the Company of Apprentices in the city generated the necessity to pick up / recruit young people from the lowest stratum of society, those considered as socially disqualified, for training with the purpose of crew the war vessels. In this research we used Newspapers, Ministerial Reports and several significant works for completeness of the work.