Conclusion: Ideas that Shaped Brazilian History

Summary

Silva Lisboa's role during Brazil's Independence needed to be reassessed and his publications, reinterpreted. By challenging some of these classic interpretations that presented either a positive only or negative only view of the future viscount, I introduced some nuances and proved the two main arguments of this work: that the author was part of a broad Reformist or Catholic Enlightenment movement and that he could be perceived as a paradigmatic advocate of an Independence that would not necessarily take place. I did so by examining his publications through the study of the history of political ideas, overcoming analysis that depict him as either a pro-independence liberal ‘founding father’ or as a mere reactionary in favour of the Union with Portugal under the Crown of Braganza, whereas he was neither of these things.

Highlighting aspects of Silva Lisboa's journalistic publications that have not previously been discussed was important to establish the framework for a deeper analysis of a section of his vast work. Until now the focus of most studies regarding Silva Lisboa's career as a journalist has been the controversial debates in the press in which he was presented as embracing a proto-conservative, pro-union camp against those whose main goal was the freedom of the Brazilian people. I have challenged this view by presenting a broader perspective and showing that Silva Lisboa's active protagonism as a journalist, from the departure of the King to Portugal in April 1821 until the calling of a Brazilian Assembly in 1822, contributed to Independence even without embracing it.

To investigate these proposals, I decided to limit the focus of this monograph to Silva Lisboa's journalistic works, where the extent of his ideas needed to be limited by restrictions of space and newsworthiness, commenting on events while they were taking place. It did not prevent him from publishing dense pamphlets, loaded with references and metaphors that demand a degree of prior reading, not only from today's readers but also those of the nineteenth century. This, I believe, may also have limited the contemporary comprehension of these publications, and may have led to many of the criticisms accusing the future Cairu of being a snob, a charlatan, or antiquated and behind the times.