Building an empire in the Age of Revolutions: Independence and immigration in the Brazilian borderlands

Abstract

Throughout Brazil’s Independence process, its central elites and the Crown planned what was to become of their new nation. Arguments over political systems and the continuation of slavery were at the heart of the debate, which drew in rich, poor, and the enslaved alike. As the empires of the Old World were rent at the seams by wars and conflicts, Brazil was rethinking its role in the world. In this article, inspired by the dialogue between micro-history and global history, and by the trans-imperial trajectory of the Bavarian doctor Georg von Schaeffer, I examine the political ideas that informed the consolidation of the Brazilian Empire as a de facto empire. I also situate the ideas and proposals put forth by Schaeffer, a representative of the Brazilian government in Europe, within the crisis of legitimacy sparked by the Napoleonic invasions, the subsequent independence of Portuguese America, and the array of political projects that were able to emerge as a result. Through an analysis of the diplomatic documentation produced by the Brazilian Empire’s main posts in Europe, I reveal a complex web from which the Brazilian government drew information, and the channels that carried news of alliances, clashes, and political repertoires that would go into the making of a tropical empire.