Dom Pedro II

Pedro de Alcântara, son of Pedro I, became emperor at age five when his father abdicated in 1831 and was declared of age in 1840. He reigned under the 1824 Constitution, which gave the monarch a Moderating Power to appoint ministers and dissolve the Chamber. His reign saw relative political stability, the end of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil in 1850, the Paraguayan War of 1864-1870 and gradual abolition laws culminating in the Golden Law of 1888. A military coup proclaimed the Republic in November 1889, and he died in exile in Paris.

Pedro II is widely remembered in Brazil as a scholarly and austere ruler whose long reign kept a vast territory united and built stable parliamentary habits. Monarchists and many historians admire his personal integrity, tolerance of criticism and patronage of science and culture. Critics argue that he moved slowly against slavery, which Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish, that the political system rested on a small electorate and patronage, and that the Paraguayan War caused enormous loss of life. Republicans of his time saw the monarchy as outdated, and his deposition met little resistance. His remains were returned to Brazil in the 1920s and rest in the cathedral of Petrópolis, near the Imperial Museum that preserves his former summer palace.