This article examines the ways in which the perception of Rio de Janeiro's drinking water contributed to shaping the city's hydric management in colonial and imperial times. Even though the general assessment of climate and vegetation changed from paradisiacal to noxious in the second half of the eighteenth century in accordance with Enlightenment ideas, this had no effect on the locals’ appreciation of the city's drinking water. The criteria for evaluating the quality and quantity of available water were based on works from classical antiquity and remained essentially unchanged from early colonial times to the end of the empire. Not even population growth and increasing susceptibility to epidemics in the nineteenth century induced the authorities to reform the water supply system, as they were confident that the city was provided with good and abundant water by virtue of its natural predisposition.
In 1808, Portugal's royal court fled from Napoleon's forces and resettled in Rio de Janeiro. Within a very short time, the city's population grew rapidly while it also had to meet the demands of a European royal capital. This situation fostered two different security discourses. On the one hand, there was a discourse, also widespread throughout much of Europe, on the threat posed by mostly foreign revolutionaries. But, as this contribution shows, on the other hand, there was a telling silence about potentially insurgent black people. This silence was only broken once they became the target of repression by the public security apparatus and more and more frequently struggled to establish their rights (and thus their security). However, the abolition of slavery in 1888 intensified racism, which once again became covered by public silence -a silence that willfully ignored the difference constituted by this very racism and thus continued to obstruct security for the black population.
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