From Raynal to De Pradt: notes for a study of the idea of emancipation of America and its presence in Brazil

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis, from within the process which led to the independence of Brazil, of the confluence between concrete historical examples of rupture between colonies and metropolis, and the statements of doctrinarian and programmatic nature around the same question; which, by being present in the Luso-American region, offered references for political action. The analysis particularly focuses on the writings regarding Spanish America published and read in the Luso-American world. In a certain way, those writings seem to have affected the visions of the world and to have shaped collective behaviours. This contributed to create an intellectual environment in the first decades of the 19th century, where the rupture between the Portuguese metropolis and its American colonies was not just conceived, but carried out.