Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions
The Luso-Brazilian World, c.1770–1850

A pioneering account of the links between Portugal and Brazil which survived despite the demise of the Portuguese Atlantic empire.

Gabriel Paquette (Author)

9781107028975, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 2013

466 pages, 10 b/w illus. 1 map
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.8 kg

'Paquette has little to say about the military dimension of the independence process. Instead, he is interested in high politics and has written a book of great value, based on a dazzling number of published sources and research in thirty-four archives on both sides of the Atlantic. His work is especially strong in its discussion of the great variety of constitutional projects.' Wim Klooster, Latin American Research Review

As the British, French and Spanish Atlantic empires were torn apart in the Age of Revolutions, Portugal steadily pursued reforms to tie its American, African and European territories more closely together. Eventually, after a period of revival and prosperity, the Luso-Brazilian world also succumbed to revolution, which ultimately resulted in Brazil's independence from Portugal. The first of its kind in the English language to examine the Portuguese Atlantic World in the period from 1750 to 1850, this book reveals that despite formal separation, the links and relationships that survived the demise of empire entwined the historical trajectories of Portugal and Brazil even more tightly than before. From constitutionalism to economic policy to the problem of slavery, Portuguese and Brazilian statesmen and political writers laboured under the long shadow of empire as they sought to begin anew and forge stable post-imperial orders on both sides of the Atlantic.

Introduction
1. The reform of empire in the late eighteenth century
2. From foreign invasion to imperial disintegration
3. Decolonization's progeny: restoration, disaggregation, and recalibration
4. The last Atlantic revolution: emigrados, Miguelists, and the Portuguese Civil War
5. After Brazil, after civil war: the origins of Portugal's African empire
Conclusion: the long shadow of Empire in the Luso-Atlantic world
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK], European history [HBJD]