In the Shadow of Independence: Portugal, Brazil, and Their Mutual

In the Shadow of Independence: Portugal, Brazil,

and Their Mutual Influence after the End

of Empire (late 1820s-early 1840s)

Gabriel Paquette

Historians have long recognized how the formal achievement of independence

meant neither that the legacies of colonialism had been extirpated nor that the newly won

sovereignty was unencumbered. Legacies of colonialism in Latin America after

independence were numerous and included older forms of indigenous tribute and taxation,

labor regimes such as slavery, legal codes, and the position of the post-colonial polity in the

world economy, the latter of which also circumscribed sovereignty as scholars working in

the Dependency Theory, Informal Empire, and World Systems traditions have

demonstrated.

Recently, historians have begun to recognize that many non-economic connections

and relationships between Europe and Latin America survived the disintegration of the

Ibero-Atlantic empires and that many new ones, both overtly coercive and less so, were

formed (e.g., the circulation of political ideas; European immigration schemes) (Brown and

Paquette 2013). Three phenomena—the “persistence of mutual influence,” the repair or re-

thickening of frayed threads, and the spinning of new, unprecedented transatlantic webs—

may be understood as combining to make plausible the notion of “Late Atlantic History”

(Rothschild 2011); that is, an Atlantic History after the demise of formal empire.

Traditionally, Atlantic History’s outer chronological limit was defined by the separation of

the European metropolises from their American dominions, episodes normally considered

Earlier versions of this article were given as papers at the “Portuguese History in a Global Context“

Colloquium held at Brown University (October 2012) and at the American Historical Association Annual

Meeting in New Orleans (January 2013). The author is grateful for the numerous helpful suggestions and

criticisms he received in response to both presentations, which were used in revising this article for

publication.

The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. E-Mail: [email protected]

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part of the “Age of Atlantic Revolutions” (Armitage and Subrahmanyan 2010), after the

recognition of “independence” was recognized and enshrined in international law. The

survival of many links and connections, however, makes it plausible to think of those links

within the context of an Atlantic History with enlarged temporal boundaries.

Late Atlantic History might also confront, this article suggests, the problem of

absence, how the severance of links during the process of emancipation had lingering

effects on individuals, institutions, and states. For the present purposes, Portugal’s situation

for the two decades following formal recognition of Brazilian independence in August 1825

is an ideal case study. The problem of absence, or the whole host of dilemmas generated by

the sudden deprivation of a centuries-old overseas empire, is something that few historians

have investigated.

The theme might profitably be split into two, though still entwined areas of

enquiry: first, the impact of these “Atlantic emancipations” on the ex-metropolises (Spain

and Portugal); and, second, the degree to which newfound sovereignty in the Americas was

felt to be secure from the machinations of the former metropolises; that is, to what degree

and to what effect did Brazilians fear Portuguese recolonization? The argument sustained

for the remainder of this article is this: first, the impact on Portugal of Brazil’s

independence was tremendous, not so much in economic terms, but in its impact on

domestic politics, international stature, and subsequent colonial policy; and, second, fears

of a Portuguese “reconquest” or “recolonization” scheme, apart from generalized

Lusophobia, especially in the 1831-34 period, had a pronounced impact on Brazilian

politics in the aftermath of independence.

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PART I

How was Portugal impacted by Brazilian independence? In a word, significantly,

though nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians tended to erase, or at least

relegate to the background, the profundity and ubiquity of this impact. As in Spain, there

has been a tendency to downplay the economic impact of independence, or at least to

portray it as something other than a disaster. There seems to be good evidence on both

sides of this question (see, for example, the Lains-Alexandre debate over the economic

impact of Brazilian independence in Portugal), but what is both surprising, as well as well-

documented, even if scarcely studied, is the impact of Brazil’s independence, and the

survival of monarchy and the Braganza dynasty in Brazil, on Portuguese politics in the

1820s and 1830s, as well as on Portuguese deliberations concerning how to approach the

remnants of its empire (in Central-Southern Africa).

The present author has written extensively elsewhere on the constitutional

question (Paquette 2011), so little will be mentioned here regarding the constitutional

question in this article. Suffice to say that Dom Pedro remained heir to the Portuguese

throne after Portugal’s recognition of Brazil’s independence in August 1825, so that when

his father Dom João died in 1826, he succeeded to the Portuguese throne. Unable to wear

both crowns according to the terms of the constitution he had bestowed upon Brazil in

1824, he abdicated in favor of his daughter, Dona Maria, and promulgated a constitution

which he imposed on Portugal, the 1826 Carta Constitucional. Portuguese constitutionalism

in the nineteenth century would be indelibly marked by empire’s strange death and Dom

Pedro’s unrealized ambition to unite both crowns, as the Carta remained Portugal’s

constitution, with several important modifications, until the fall of the monarchy in 1910.

There were other connections beyond constitutionalism: many of the enslaved

Africans sold into bondage in Brazil in the 1820s and 1830s were disembarked from

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Portuguese controlled enclaves in central and southern Africa. The enclaves assumed a

greater importance after Brazil’s independence. Without colonies, and therefore without

colonial products to re-export and markets to open up to allies, Portugal’s policymakers

believed, the Lusitanian monarchy’s very survival was imperiled and many feared that its

absorption into Spain was inevitable. Yet, paradoxically, and a cruel paradox it was,

Portuguese Africa’s economy remained entirely dependent on the slave trade, which was

itself reliant on the Brazilian market for slaves. This meant that Portuguese policy was at

the mercy of Brazilian demand and also that any attempt to move away from dependence

on the slave trade threatened to lead to disturbances in Angola and Mozambique (in

particular), which some feared would join with Brazil as part of a South Atlantic

confederation. In these two ways, constitutionalism and colonialism, then, among many

others, Portugal’s post-imperial experience was shaped indelibly, in terms of both presence

and absence, by the experience of imperial dismemberment.

From this vantage point, the Portuguese Civil War, occurring between 1828 and

1834, is not the insular event which it is usually understood to have been, but instead may

be more helpfully conceived against the backdrop of decolonization, as an episode of late

Atlantic history, in which the ambiguity of Brazil’s break from Portugal loomed large. The

Civil War, of course, broke out when Dom Miguel, Dom Pedro’s younger brother, refused

to accept the legitimacy of the Carta or the marital arrangement to his niece, Dona Maria.

This rejection led many of the Carta ’s supporters, the so-called Cartistas, into exile and

they eventually coalesced on the Azorean island of Terceira, from which by 1834 they

eventually emerged triumphant with Dona Maria II installed and the Carta the law of the

land.

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Prior to his abdication of the Brazilian throne in 1831, the pro-Carta Regency

assembled from 1829 on Terceira recognized that its success hinged on Dom Pedro.

Vigorous efforts to persuade him to travel to Terceira were made from March 1830. Yet

Dom Pedro’s centrality to the Civil War’s outcome would have seemed far-fetched several

years earlier. After granting his Carta and abdicating the throne, the emperor publicly

evinced little interest in Portugal’s predicament before his bother Dom Miguel’s coup d’état.

There were various domestic reasons why Dom Pedro distanced himself from European

affairs between 1826 and 1831, including mounting levels of Lusophobia in Brazil. For

their part, the Carta ’s supporters expected little aid from Dom Pedro or the Brazilian

government. A leading figure argued that, given the “difficult and extraordinary” relations

with Brazil, Portugal would be served best by “maintaining the status quo;” that is,

receiving regular payments from Brazil in accordance with the terms of the still-secret

pecuniary convention that accompanied formal recognition of Brazil’s independence in

August 1825.

Even as the Civil War approached, few, if any, partisans of the Carta

expected the succor of its framer.

There were several interconnected reasons why the Regency suddenly regarded

Dom Pedro as a savior, which not easy to disentangle. The first and most obvious reason

was the emperor’s personal connection to what was transpiring, particularly to his daughter,

in whose name the Regency justified its existence and armed struggle. The second reason

was Dom Pedro’s status as titular head of a sovereign state. Unless Dom Pedro recognized

the Regency as the legitimate government of Portugal, to which he was linked by “so many

titles and blood,” and in which he had “direct interest,” there was little hope for other

governments to do so.

Part of the justification for permitting Dom Pedro to nominate the

ANTT, MNE, livro 356, Mouzinho de Albuquerque to Luiz de Vasconcellos e Sousa, “Circular no. 3,” 19

March 1830.

ANTT, MNE, cx. 153, Lavradio to Palmela, 23 September 1826.

ANTT, MNE, livro 356, Mouzinho de Albuquerque to Conde do Sabugal, “Circular no. 5”, 22 March 1830.

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members of the Regency in 1829 was precisely to secure such formal recognition. The third

reason for Dom Pedro’s pertinence to the emigrado cause was his authorship of the Carta.

Dom Pedro’s right to compose and impose a constitution, during his brief tenure as King

of Portugal in 1826, became an essential aspect in the defense of the Carta as well as Dona

Maria, whose right to rule was derived directly from it.

The recognition of Dom Pedro’s Brazilian government was sought by liberal exiles

for material reasons as well: to obtain the funds needed to keep the almost penniless

Regency afloat. As the fledgling Spanish American republics had less than a decade earlier,

the Regency plainly understood that international recognition was required to obtain a loan

from European financiers. With a loan, as previously mentioned, the Regency would obtain

munitions and raise a foreign legion, for the number and resources of the emigrados were

too small to mount an invasion of Portugal.

Recognition of the Regency as the legitimate

government of Portugal would enable Brazil to either bankroll the Regency directly or to

serve as the guarantor of its debt (and debt service). Either way, Brazil would supply the

funds owed to Portugal by the terms of the 1825 pecuniary convention of the recognition

treaty. These funds, of course, were justified officially as compensation for public property

lost due to Brazil’s independence, but in fact they were ear-marked to repay the loan taken

by Portugal in London in 1823, which had underwritten its botched reconquest of Brazil.

This new arrangement, however, could be effected only if the Regency were

recognized, first by Brazil and subsequently by other European powers, as Portugal’s

legitimate government. Throughout the year 1830, gaining official diplomatic recognition

was the chief aim of the Regency’s diplomacy.

Recognition, one leading Regency figure

hoped, would presage robust relations between Brazil and Portugal. He authorized a

Portuguese agent to enter into negotiations in 1830 for a “permanent and reciprocal

On the desirability of a foreign legion, see Palmela to Abreu e Lima, 8 March 1831, reproduced in Abreu e

Lima 1874, p. 43.

ANTT, MNE, livro 356, Mouzinho de Albuquerque to Conde do Sabugal, “Circular no. 4,” 22 March

1830.

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defensive alliance.” Such an alliance would make it incumbent upon the Brazilian

government to “declare war on the usurping government of Portugal,” suspend commerce

between Dom Miguel’s Portugal and Brazil, and, finally, supply the regency with “three of

four frigates” with which it could “establish its authority throughout the Azores and take

control of Madeira, whose possession would provide the Regency with the resources it

currently lacks.” It was unclear why some believed that the Brazilian government would be

tempted into such an alliance, except out of altruism, or what concessions the Regency

would have to make in order to obtain such favorable terms. But the urgency of the

situation was unmistakable. “We cannot hope,” a leading emigrado concluded, “that a serious

movement against Dom Miguel will appear in Portugal while the Regency languishes

without resources and remains isolated due to the blockade of Terceira.”

Yet the Brazilian government never formally recognized the Regency, a source of

immense disappointment and cause for endless complaint. Dom Pedro did little, even in a

private capacity, furnishing those stranded on Terceira with inadequate material support.

Palmela and Vila Flor, two leading figures of the regency, expressed their dismay directly to

Dom Pedro: “our actions on this island are necessarily passive, for the material assistance

VM promised has arrived slowly and only in part. It scarcely sustains 4,000 men in great

hardship.”

These pleas did not win the formal recognition they so desperately desired. Nor

did they gain material relief, leading another Portuguese emigrado to curse the “horrible

duplicity,” “bad faith,” and “perfidy” of the Brazilian government, which “paralyzes us”

and “forces us into violent and desperate action.”

He sarcastically asked Brazil’s emissary

to Britain whether the Brazilian government, “by depriving the Regency of all means to

ANTT, MNE, livro 356, Mouzinho de Albuquerque to Conde do Sabugal, “Circular no. 5,” 22 March,1830.

ANTT, MR (Regência em Angra do Heroísmo), livro 451, Palmela and Vila Flor to Dom Pedro, 20 March

1830.

ANTT, MNE, livro 469, Abreu e Lima to Mouzinho de Albuquerque, 4 November 1830.

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sustain itself,” sought to “oblige [it] to surrender to the Usurper?”

In private

correspondence, an exasperated emigrado exclaimed, “it is extraordinary that we have never

received a single favorable thing from Brazil … from wicked Brazil come only bad things

which muddle matters further.”

After arriving in Paris after his abdication in 1831, Dom Pedro warmed to the

emigrado cause. He joined the Regency on Terceira, where he eventually maneuvered to

place himself at its head. Some emigrados were both incredulous and apoplectic: “the Men of

1820 working for the ex-Emperor of Brazil to become King of Portugal? Who would have

predicted it!”

Even to his staunch supporters, Dom Pedro’s spasmodic engagement and

long stretches of indifferent lethargy were perplexing, his motives far from transparent.

Mouzinho da Silveira could not fathom “what caused Pedro to issue the Carta or why he

later seemed to abandon it and remain in Brazil” (Mouzinho da Silveira 1989, II: 639). Yet

the ex-Emperor eventually became semi-palatable to most emigrado factions, for both

strategic as well as ideological reasons, so long as he operated within the limits they

imposed. As two emigrado pamphleteers joked, they supported Dom Pedro because “he was

a revolutionary in 1820; he gave the Carta to Portugal; he is the father of our Queen; and,

besides, without him, the cause of our puny Regency would never stand a chance of gaining

a foothold in the patria” (Passos 1831: 4). Furthermore, the fact that Dom Pedro’s

meddling exasperated the despised Courts of Europe only enhanced his appeal. As one of

Dom Pedro’s champions remarked, with pleasure and a great deal of hyperbole, to one of

the ex-Emperor’s confidants, “His crimes cannot be expiated: he gave two liberal

ANTT, MNE, livro 469, Abreu e Lima to Marquês de Santo Amaro [José Egidio Álvares de Almeida,

1767-1832], 22 December 1830.

Marquês de Sta. Iria to Condessa de Vila Real, 31 December 1830, in Ventura 2000, pp. 69-70.

BPMP, MSS. 1916, “Carta a Rodrigo Pinto Pizarro [por hum Emigrado Portuguez em Paris],” 31 October

1831, fos. 43-44.

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constitutions to two countries in two hemispheres, and thus destroyed the misguided Holy

Alliance.”

It may be enquired why Dom Pedro hesitated and perseverated, actions at odds

with his much-criticized impetuousness at many junctures, both political and personal.

There are several explanations, most of which relate to the delicate Brazilian political

context in which he operated, where his continued involvement with Iberian affairs rankled

the increasingly vocal “nativist” party. Certainly, the precarious and destabilized state of

Brazil’s finances left him without expendable resources. Some of his behavior must be

attributed to the steady stream of information he received concerning Portuguese affairs

from his advisors. After the promulgation of the Carta yet before Dom Miguel’s

usurpation, the letters of Dom Pedro’s envoy to Europe (Resende) caused disquiet. In a

December 1827 missive, Resende made clear that “ultra-liberals were falsely professing

love for VM, draping themselves in the Carta for the nefarious end of re-establishing the

infernal [1822 constitution],” whereas the “ultra-royalists” were swapping the banner of

Dom Pedro for that of Dom Miguel.

But Dom Pedro, who evidently thrived on adulation, received further entreaties

that aroused his interest in European affairs. In a January 1828 letter from Saldanha, who

was in communication with exiled Spanish general and conspirator Espoz y Mina about a

federal (or confederated) Iberian Peninsula, with Dom Pedro as its constitutional monarch,

the general insisted that European liberals esteemed him: “Is it possible, Senhor”, Saldanha

enquired, “that VM does not wish to rule fourteen million men, Portuguese and Spaniards,

with whose support you might sustain your authority in America, to the alternative of

ruling over three million men of every color who nurture in their hearts the darkest

ingratitude?”

But even Saldanha’s sycophantic exhortation failed to move Dom Pedro,

Silva Carvalho to Gomes da Silva, 13 June 1831, reproduced in Vianna 1891, vol. I, doc. 69, p.76.

AMI, II-PAN-05.01 .1828-Dau.C., Saldanha to Dom Pedro, 5 January 1828; see also Braz Augusto Aquino

Brancato, “D. Pedro: Uma Opção Liberal para a Espanha,” in Oliveira Ramos 2001.

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who refused to jeopardize Brazil’s de facto geopolitical neutrality. Beyond a smattering of

proclamations and dispatching diplomats to European courts to generate support for his

daughter’s cause, Dom Pedro recused himself from direct action. His involvement in the

Portuguese civil war emerged less from commitment to his daughter’s cause or liberal

ideas, than his hasty abdication, which left him casting about aimlessly in Europe, bereft of

throne and funds.

His failure to act before 1831, however, should not be mistaken for indifference.

Dom Pedro allotted much attention to the affairs of Portugal, even if he proved stingy in

the material relief of the emigrados and withheld explicit, formal recognition of their cause.

In his private correspondence, Dom Pedro lamented the fate of “the much compromised

Portuguese refugees … martyrs of legitimacy and lovers (amantes) of the Carta” whereas his

proclamations urged the Portuguese to “save the Carta.”

He sought to answer emigrado

pleas for material assistance. Barbacena suggested that whatever was allocated could be

recouped after Dona Maria was installed on the throne by selling Bissau to France or else

Timor to the United States.

The minutes of the Brazilian Conselho de Estado reveal an

intense and abiding interest in Portuguese affairs but also conflicting views concerning the

desirable extent of Brazil’s interference. In November 1829, the question arose whether the

£300,000 still owed to the Portuguese government according to the terms of the 1825

Pecuniary Convention should be diverted to support the emigrados in Brazil. Most members

of the Conselho, a body composed of devout monarchists, concurred with Marquês de

Aracati that the emigrados should receive the funds still owed, but Marquês de Paranaguá

dissented, claiming that if it were to “compromise the government in any way”, the funds

should not be dispensed.

Evidently, these funds never reached the emigrados, though the

See AMI, II-POB.1828.P1.B.do.1-151 (pasta 1), Dom Pedro to Barbacena, 23 December 1828; and Dom

Pedro, “Proclamação á Nação Portuguesa” (1828), found in the same folder.

Barbacena to Dom Pedro, 6 March 1829, quoted in Oliveira Lima 1933, p. 72.

Conselho de Estado (Brazil), Session 36, 30 November 1829, in Senado Federal 1973, p. 95.

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historical record is unclear whether or not they were disbursed following Dom Pedro’s

abdication.

PART II

What about Brazil? To what degree did the machinations of the ex-metropolis, real

or imagined, impact the development of politics in the early national period? In the case of

Spain and Spanish America, the much better known case, the retention of Cuba and Puerto

Rico provided an archipelagic beachhead for peninsular reconquest dreams, especially as

Fernando VII refused to countenance formal recognition of the new Spanish American

states’ independence. The 1829 abortive invasion of Mexico, which triggered mass

expulsions of peninsular Spaniards, was a clear-cut case of how independence, whether de

facto or de jure, did not lead to the abrupt end of schemes for reconquest.

As it turns out, the insecure nature of independence was a concern over which

many Brazilians fretted in the decades after Portugal’s formal recognition of that fact, in

1825. Much of the cause of the distress was mistrust of the motives of the Braganza family,

particularly the ambitions of Dom Pedro I, emperor of Brazil, whose great stake in the

outcome of Portuguese political strife rankled many Brazilian who wished the avoid

entanglements in European politics. In fact, it was Dom Pedro’s inability to refrain from

meddling in peninsular affairs, or at least the perception that he was interfering behind the

scenes, which hastened his abdication.

Ignominious 1831 abdication aside, Dom Pedro retained no dearth of allies in

Brazil, many of whom entertained fantasies of a restoration until his premature death in

1834. And some of these so-called “restorationists” retained hope for a grand

reconciliation between Portugal and Brazil, which seemed plausible for reasons to be

addressed subsequently in this article. The existence of such “restorationists” was a major,

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if largely neglected, factor in the development of Brazilian politics in the early 1830s.

Support for Dom Pedro percolated not only at the elite level, but also was ubiquitous

among the lower and middle classes. His 1831 abdication sparked urban uprisings led by

disgruntled troops in Bahia, Pernambuco, and Minas Gerais. Unrest also spread among the

civilian population—rural and urban—of the Northeast, which had suffered through

severe drought in 1824-1825 and which was afflicted by another protracted bout with

drought (1830-1834) (Reis 1993: 15).

In the backlands of Ceará, the ex-military official Pinto Madeira fomented a pro-

Dom Pedro I revolt. His pro-Portuguese sentiments were well-known already, for he led an

ill-fated, pro-Portuguese uprising in 1825. Brazilian authorities claimed, accurately, that

Pinto Madeira aimed to “re-establish the old system of Portuguese government, and

introduce a political schism among the rural folk who cry out for the rey velho”, using this

doctrine as a cover to “rob, murder, and disturb the peace.”

In 1832, after Dom Pedro’s

abdication, Pinto Madeira renewed his resistance, determining that the restoration of the

deposed Emperor was his last, best hope at a regime capable of keeping nativist fury at bay.

Though his movement was dismissed as a “crazy insurrection” by an “idiotic sertanejo” in

the urban press, his actions were heeded as a warning that “fratricide” could “devastate

entire cities,” reminiscent of the wars then pulverizing the nascent Spanish American

polities.

Pinto Madeira’s threat dissipated, due to a combination of brutal repression and

weak leadership, but he proved to be a harbinger for more serious, popular threats to the

Regency governing Brazil while Dom Pedro II was a child. In April 1832, a coalition of

Portuguese-born troops, merchants, and artisans revolted in Recife, aiming to restore Dom

“Officio de José Felix de Azevedo e Sá, Presidente da Provincia do Ceará, ao Ouvidor Interino da Comarca

do Crato—Ordenado que se proceda á devassa sobre os crimes de Joaquim Pinto Madeira,” 20 July 1825,

published in Publicações do Archivo Nacional 1929, vol. XXIV, pp. 297-98.

O Harmonizador, no. 7 (12 March 1832), pp. 27-29 passim.

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Pedro I to the throne. Shouts of “Viva Dom Pedro, Rei de Portugal, e do Brasil”

echoed in the

streets.

In rural Pernambuco, planters and Portuguese merchants fomented a rebellion,

mobilizing peasants uneasy with the land encroachment of the period.

Even when elites

withdrew their support, frightened by the social revolutionary turn, the peasant rebellion

continued. These revolutionaries became known as “Cabanos,” after the humble forest huts

or shacks, called cabanas, in which they dwelled. Cabano, of course, was a derogatory term,

with negative connotations of backwardness and poverty. By 1832, the War of the Cabanos,

or Cabanada, was raging. A guerilla force composed of Indians, runaway slaves, and other

discontents coalesced around the charismatic figure of Vicente de Paula, a former sergeant

in the now-disbanded colonial militia, who assumed the rather grandiose title “General of

the Royalist Forces.” Paula claimed that the “blood-thirsty” Regency and “corrupt, lowly”

Assembly jointly had “usurped” Dom Pedro I’s throne and were doing the same to his

underage successor, thus legitimizing their struggle against the “Jacobins” of Rio de Janeiro,

who manipulated the constitution to pursue their personal ambitions and advance their

material interests.

Dom Pedro I’s 1831 abdication also was greeted throughout Brazil with anti-

Portuguese riots, with attacks on Portuguese-owned inns, houses, and stores, accompanied

by the ubiquitous cry of “mata-marotos” (“kill the rascals[!]”).

Portuguese-born Brazilians

and Portuguese were beaten and killed, while stores were looted, ransacked, and burned.

Anti-Portuguese attacks in 1831-1832, in Bahia at least, often were associated with a

federalist political sympathies, but most lacked a clearly defined program of social or

IAHGP, cx. 215, mç. 4, “Oficios do Presidente” (25 April 1832).

APEJE, B.L. Ferreira to Pedro Ara[ú]jo Lima, 24 September 1832, fo. 160.

On elite support for the Cabanos, see Ferraz 1996, p. 196; on the Abrilada and its connection to rural

unrest, see Mosher 2008, pp. 92-93.

Vicente de Paula, Proclamation of 16 November 1833, quoted in Andrade 1965, p. 208.

In part, anger was exacerbated by a fresh wave of Portuguese immigration to Brazil after 1825. As one

newspaper in Maranhão noted, “the Portuguese who come [to Brazil] are for the most part born in the

backward sertões of their provinces, and they unite the innate stupidity of country folk in Europe with all of

the vices which percolate in the cities of Porto and Lisbon,” O Brasileiro, no. 3 (6 September 1832), p. 10.

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political reform. The Portuguese were convenient scapegoats, and the notion of expelling

them from Brazilian soil, or at least depriving them of civil, military, and ecclesiastical

appointments, was an attractive distraction from deep-seated problems (Reis 1993: 32-38;

Souza 1987: 180). It is difficult to determine whether Lusophobia served to inspire or

further inflame such “restorationist” movements or whether the outbreak of rebellion itself

generated (or at least brought into the open) fierce anti-Portuguese sentiments. In all

likelihood, it was a feedback loop. It is clear that the aftermath of the abdication and the

onset of what historians lump together as the early Regency rebellions heightened

sentiments which, in turn, made the possibility of Dom Pedro I’s return semi-plausible.

Some commentators dismissed fears of Portugal and the Portuguese resident in

Brazil, disparaging rumors of plots as “fantasies concocted by hyper-active patriotic

imaginations. The Brazilians have more than adequate strength to sustain their

independence.”

Restoration was more than a fantasy, however, though the figure of Dom

Pedro was of far greater importance than some sentimental affinity with Portugal or a

nostalgic saudade for the colonial regime. An active Sociedade Conservadora da Constituição

Jurada do Império flourished in Rio de Janeiro from 1832, with three of Andrada brothers

among its charter members. They made overtures to Dom Pedro in 1832-34, to which he

responded evasively and ambivalently. Several of the members of the Sociedade held

positions in the Council of State and occupied senate seats from which they could not be

dislodged except by death, according to the life-terms enshrined in the 1824 Constitution

(Kirschner 2009: 277).

The threat, then, was palpable, but the fear it produced was wildly disproportionate,

even hysterical. It confused disaffection with Dom Pedro’s abdication with an imminent

threat to Brazil’s sovereignty, whether blinded by genuine paranoia or motivated by the

benefits of intentional obfuscation. “The Portuguese are without doubt the true motors of

O Harmonizador, no. 5 (January 16, 1832), pp. 19-22 passim.

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the disorder which is destroying this province,” an official in Pará reported, “they cannot

accept that the Brazilians are not their slaves any longer.” He alleged that many Portuguese

in Pará had “almost confessed to a criminal union with Dom Miguel.”

When local

disturbances occurred, they were blamed routinely on the “Luso-Restorationist club” which

sought to return Dom Pedro to his former throne.

As Dom Pedro’s fortunes in Portugal’s

Civil War improved, he became the object of reconquest ambition fears. In Recife, O

Carapuceiro assumed that Dom Pedro would not be “content to retire to England or France

and live a quiet, private life. He is ambitious.”

In Maranhão, one newspaper noted that

while the deposed Dom Pedro “recognized the impossibility of conquering all of Brazil,”

the provinces of the North, upon which “the Portuguese never gazed without saudades,”

remained a target of reconquest due to their “wealth and proximity to Portugal.”

There

were constant reports in São Luis during 1833-34 of the mysterious machinations of a

“restorationist faction” and their legions of shadowy Portuguese supporters.

Evidently, high-ranking officials expected Portuguese warships to appear on the

horizon at any moment. “Duque de Braganza will attempt to invade Brazil to restore his

throne”, one alarmed Pernambucan official reported, and “we must destroy the miserable

horde of slaves [in Brazil] who support the Duque, who seeks to destroy our liberties and

re-impose the insupportable yoke of tyranny.”

The impact of these “recolonization”

anxieties and Luso-Restorationist rumors were felt at many registers of society. On a local

level, they spawned grotesque anti-Portuguese violence. In Rio Negro, Pará, it was reported

that “horrible robberies, violence, and massacres were perpetrated against those who did

ANRJ, Serie Interior, IJJ

, 108 (Pará), Visconde de Goiana to Ministro do Império, 30 August 1831, fos.

328, 332, 338.

IHGB, lata 286, livro 5 (Colleccão de Documentos sobre a Cabanagem no Pará, 1834-36), “Decreto de

Presidente Bernard Lobo de Souza”, 13 October 1834.

O Carapuceiro, no. 26 (2 July 1834), p. 3.

Echo do Norte, no. 3 (10 July 1834), pp. 11-12.

See, for example, Echo do Norte, no. 35 (4 November 1834), p. 139.

APEJE, PP

, José Marciano de Albuquerque e Cavalcanti to Manuel Seferino dos Santos, August 8, 1833.

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not have the fortune to be born in Brazil.”

In the small town of Arraial do Pilar, in Matto

Grosso, Portuguese-born inhabitants were attacked for allegedly stock-piling weapons for

use in the anticipated war to restore Portuguese rule. The resulted mob violence claimed

the lives of thirty of the town’s Portuguese inhabitants (Barbosa 1999: 80). In Maceió, an

official admitted that “adoptive citizens and Portuguese are persecuted to inhumane

extremes by extremist radicals [exaltados], to the extent that commerce here is stagnant, and

the city is entirely deserted.”

During the Cabanada, Pernambuco’s provincial government

proposed the transport of all Portuguese-born Brazilians “accused, according to public

opinion,” of being restorationists to the island of Fernando de Noronha, dispensing with

legal due process.

At the level of national politics, the Luso-Restorationist “threat” lent urgency to

constitutional and other types of legal-administrative reform. Such fears were expressed

publicly by leading national politicians in the Assembly. Vasconcelos, for example,

described the likelihood of Dom Pedro’s attempted restoration as “very probable” and a

“natural” step. He observed that the common people were “very frightened” of this

“dangerous” prospect and that “measures must be taken to prevent it.”

In 1834, the

Assembly voted by a large majority to exclude permanently Dom Pedro I’s return to Brazil,

though this measure was defeated in the Senate, most of whose members the ex-Emperor

had appointed personally. As an historian noted recently, the passage of the 1834

Additional Act was “aided by fears that the former Emperor would succumb to the siren

call of his supporters in Brazil and recross the Atlantic at the head of an army” (Barman

1999: 60). Many reforms, therefore, were conceived as safeguards against the alleged

APEJE, PP

, [President of Pará] J.J. Machado de Oliveira to [President of Pernambuco] F. Paes de

Carvalho, October 31, 1832.

ANRJ, IJJ

280 (Alagoas), Presidente Manoel Lobo da Miranda Henriques to José Lino Coutinho

[Ministério do Império], November 19, 1831, fo. 185.

IAHGP, cx. 215, mç. 4, “Inquerito contra Luis António Vieira” (1834).

Vasconcelos, “Discurso na Câmara dos Deputados, Sessão de 4 de Julho de 1833”, reproduced in Carvalho

1999, p. 213.

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Portuguese menace, which was considered a palpable threat until Dom Pedro’s premature

death in 1834.

Dom Pedro I’s death did not diminish the passion of the parties who used or

abused his name, though it did undermine those who manipulated and exploited the vague

threat of Portuguese reconquest (Flory 1981: 132). Still, even at the highest levels of

government, fears of Portuguese meddling in Brazilian affairs persisted, of its efforts to

cause strife which might harm Brazil’s territorial integrity and pave the way for Portugal to

carve out some bit of Brazilian soil for its. During the Cabanagem in Pará in 1835, for

example, Brazil’s envoy to Portugal continued to send back reports refuting the insinuation

of his government that Portuguese agents were to blame for the unrest in that distant

province. As late as April 1835, he had to insist that it was far-fetched (“não é crivel”) to

blame the Portuguese government for the “disorders that torment that province of the

empire,” insisting that its causes “should not be looked for outside of [Brazil].”

These anecdotes strongly suggest the conclusion that the boundary separating

colonial and national history, traditionally based upon international law (e.g. official

recognition) is somewhat arbitrary and unsatisfactory. Reunification and reconquest

schemes, however far-fetched in theory and unrealized in practice, percolated widely and

had important effects on what are often thought to be post-colonial or national politics.

Thus, the line between colony and nation (or, in Portugal’s case, between imperial and

post-imperial power) was much fuzzier and more imprecise than the existing

historiography generally acknowledges. Furthermore, nineteenth-century Portugal, at least

the quarter century after 1825, should be recast or at least viewed afresh in light of the

persistence of connections with Brazil, which exerted great influence over key episodes of

Portugal’s purportedly post-Brazilian history, from constitutionalism to colonialism.

AHI, 213-4-1, Sergio Teixeira de Macedo [from Lisbon] to Aureliano de Souza de Oliveira Coutinho,

Reservado no. 2, 6 April 1835.

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Abbreviations

AHI Arquivo Histórico do Itamaraty (Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil)

AMI Arquivo do Museu Imperial (Petrópolis, RJ, Brazil)

ANTT Arquivos Nacionais / Torre do Tombo (Lisbon, Portugal)

ANRJ Arquivo Nacional (Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil)

APEJE Arquivo Público Estadual Jordão Emerenciano (Recife, PE, Brazil)

BPMP Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto (Porto, Portugal)

IAHGP Instituto Arqueológico, Histórico e Geográfico Pernambucano (Recife, PE,

Brazil)

IHGB Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil)

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