Between Military Action and the Construction of Memory

The Marquis of Barbacena in the Cisplatine Campaign

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of the Marquis of Barbacena in the Cisplatine War (1825-1828), linking his military career to the political disputes of the First Reign and the processes of constructing historical memory. Within the recent historiographical debate, the study proposes to understand the conflict beyond its strictly military dimension, highlighting its political and diplomatic implications in the formation of the Brazilian imperial state. Using a micro-historical approach, it examines memorialistic, biographical, and printed sources from the period, revealing how Barbacena's image was constructed, contested, and reworked throughout the 19th century. The article emphasizes the processes of memory construction, both of the individual and of the conflict itself, especially the Battle of Passo do Rosário, demonstrating how different agents—contemporaries, memorialists, and biographers—selected, reinterpreted, and framed the events to produce distinct meanings about the episode. In this process, criticisms and defenses of his military actions were mobilized as instruments of political disputes, while later initiatives, including those of his children and the IHGB (Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute), sought to consolidate a more favorable memory of the Marquis and downplay the outcome of the Platine War.