1st Edition

Designing Brazil Colonialism and Governance from the Portuguese Enlightenment to Brazilian Independence (1750–1825)

By Jurandir Malerba Copyright 2025
290 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

290 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

290 Pages 28 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book presents a historical synthesis of colonial relations between Brazil and Portugal, illuminating the projects that the statesmen of the period formulated for the rich Portuguese territory in America—at first as a colonial domain, then as a potential independent country. Drawing on primary sources and historiographical dialogues with classic and current works, the book follows a... Read more

Foreword, Wim Klooster  Introduction: a bridge to the past  Part 1: Brazil within the Portuguese Empire  1. The age of reforms  2. A new pedagogy  3. The visible spectrum of lights  4. The colonial condition  5. Ideological alignment, science, and political economy  6. Whose Luso-Brazilian empire?  7. Reformers  Part 2: The Portuguese Empire in Brazil  8. War time  9. A Court in the tropics  10. Logics of Court  11. A matter of class  12. The character: João  13. José da Silva Lisboa, reformer  Part 3: From Portuguese colony to the Empire of Brazil  14. Independence: passe-partout  15. Cortes, conspiracies, and clashes  16. Profile of a man between two eras  17. José Bonifácio, architect of chimeras  Conclusion: A country for the few 

Biography

Jurandir Malerba holds a PhD in history (USP, 1997) and is a full professor at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He was a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor at Georgetown University, United States, and at Freie Universität, Berlin, where he inaugurated the Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Chair in Brazilian Studies.

"Malerba writes a compelling history of political and economic ideas and makes an original contribution to the bibliography about the period… Designing Brazil approaches the relations between Brazil and Portugal at a decisive moment that created the conditions for Brazil to transition from a colony to an independent country."

Rafael Silva Lemos, Yale University, Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies