This project aims to examine the reform of social control institutions and penal policies during the ascension and consolidation of the Constitutional Monarchy in Portugal focusing on two specific spheres of social control: the police and prison system, assessing the influence of foreign models in the definition and implementation of reforms. This project proposes a working hypothesis that it is only possible to fully understand the reforms attempted and effectively implemented in these two spheres of social control if we bring together the national context and the transnational circulation of reform models and ideals. Moreover, if it is normal to understand these exchanges in a one way road: from the more advanced to the more backward countries, this project also considers that if the majority of exchanges did occur in this direction the other way around was also present. Thence the hypothesis that some of the reforms enacted in Portugal, for example the abolition of death penalty in 1867, were also intended and indeed reached an international audience. The project will thus contribute to a more deep understanding of how the political elite that came to power in 1834 represented and theorized society and its multiple constituents and the role of the state in engineering social order and stability.

 The period to be studied begins roughly with the first liberal revolution (1820) and finishes in 1867, when, on July 1, the Sentencing and Prison Reform Act abolished the death penalty and established the penitentiary system and, on the July 2, the Polícia Civil was created. Between these dates, the clash between liberals and absolutist meant for the liberals long periods of foreign exile. However, the ascension to power of the liberal side gave place to clashes between different liberal factions resulting that many debates and reforms undertaken in the 1830s and 1840s were always unsuccessful due to permanent instability. With the relative stability achieved in the 1850s, previous debates and tentative reforms eventually culminated in the 1867 broad reform movement. This project aims to place the 1860s reforms in the context of the embryonic idealization of the 1820s and the unsuccessful reforms of the 1830s and 1840s and with their interconnectedness with transnational debates.

 The late eighteenth and early nineteenth century witnessed in Europe the beginning of the emergence of two critical political, social and technological changes that would endure in the next two centuries: mobility and the state. In first place: mobility. Due to a series of technological innovations, Europe witnessed an unparallel circulation of people and ideas. Better and cheaper transportation modes allowed growing number of individuals to travel and experience living in distant contexts. Technological developments in printing allowed the beginning of mass production and circulation of printed publications. At the political level, these changes gave rise to an unprecedented exposure of liberal political elites to foreign political models. Either to emulate or rebuff foreign examples, political and social reforms became in the European context increasingly interconnected. These were changes that would only fully develop by the end of the century, but initials effects within the political elite and its beliefs and practices begun to being felt earlier in the century.

In second place: the state. The emergence of liberalism in Europe meant, somewhat paradoxically, that the state took the central stage in the new political order (Hespanha 2004). The importance of the rule of law, increasing bureaucratization and the demands for more efficiency were translated into a more professional, centrally controlled state. One of the areas where these changes were more deeply felt was at the core at liberal ideology: security. Liberalism put security of propriety and bodily integrity at the centre of society needs. The existence of institutions and techniques of social control that could protect society against threats to these rights, but also protect the rights of the individuals on which these institutions acted upon were, in theory, essential to the new political order. In terms of the reform of social control institutions and practices, the ascension of liberalism saw the state ‘inventing’ new modes of social control the prison and the police. In terms of the prisons and penal policy, the period is marked by the debates around the penitentiary system (Spierenburg 2008; Vaz 1998). How and why these debates transcended national borders? In the case of the police reform was also marked by the transnational circulation of models, more prominently the English Metropolitan Police and the French Gendarmerie models (Emsley 2007; Lawrence, 2011; Gonçalves 2014). How did these models circulate and what was the power of foreign models in the shaping local reforms?

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