José Da Silva Lisboa and the Brazilian Independence Revisited: Introduction and Argument

Summary

This book examines the publications written between 1821 and 1822 by the economist, jurist, public administrator and historian José da Silva Lisboa (1756–1835), subsequently named Baron and Viscount of Cairu, and his assessment of the significance of the events leading to the Independence of Brazil in 1822. Generally neglected by the research of this period, Silva Lisboa was one of the main Brazilian commentators on political events from the signing of the Bases of the Constitution by Dom João VI (1767–1826) and the King's return to Portugal in 1821, as a consequence of the Liberal Revolution of 1820, until the early years of the Regency (1831–1840). He was a supporter of Brazilian autonomy during the period of The General and Extraordinary Cortes of the Portuguese Nation (1820–1822), or Cortes of Lisbon, and an important figure in the events that led to Independence, even if he did not fully embrace it.

In this book, I combine a literature review with the study of archival documentation to produce an account of Silva Lisboa's early career as a journalist and a new interpretation of his role in the independence process. To do so, I also bring to this project an overview of the impact of his thirteen publications on the work of other editors and, conversely, the impact of their publications on those of Silva Lisboa. The interpretation of these documents will bring to light the range of his ideas and how they can be related to concepts such as the Enlightenment, conservatism, liberalism, recolonization and despotism.

The work of Silva Lisboa as a journalist has always been seen by scholars of the twentieth century as sycophantic and reactionary, with his publications being revisited only recently in the context of a reformist Enlightenment; it is important to consolidate this interpretation further by analysing through the study of political philosophy his writings during Independence and by reassessing the many interpretations of the Enlightenment and of liberalism in this period. Silva Lisboa's contradictions are well documented. On the one hand, he was a ‘letrado’ (an intellectual) and introduced studies of political economy into the Luso-Brazilian world, being one of the responsible for the liberal decree opening up trade in the American possession to all friendly nations in January 1808, after the transfer of the Portuguese Royal Family to Rio de Janeiro, which ended Brazil's colonial history.