"A Colony of a Colony": The Portuguese Royal Court in Brazil

In November 1807, Lisbon played host to one of the most remarkable episodes of the Napoleonic Wars. As a French invasion force streamed across the Spanish-Portuguese border, down at the city's docks there was chaos. Panicked crowds wove their way through great packing cases, barrels of water, furniture, crates of paperwork, and bundles of books that had begun accumulating by the quayside. In driving rain, court officials struggled to oversee the loading of passengers and freight onto the Portuguese fleet. Eusebio Gomes, a royal storekeeper, was caught up in the thick of it: "Everyone wanted to board," he later wrote, "the docks filled up with boxes, crates, trunks, luggage—a thousand and one things. Many people were left behind on the quay while their belongings were stowed on board; others embarked, only to find that their luggage could not be loaded."¹ Crammed onto the convoy was a microcosm of the Portuguese elite—from royalty to government ministers, religious leaders to military advisers, courtiers to lawyers—along with their families and armies of servants and attendants. By some estimates, there were over 10,000 people spread across more than thirty ships preparing themselves for the 4,500-mile journey to Rio de Janeiro.²

The invasion came at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, as a part of the French plan to impose a continental blockade against British shipping. Portugal had tried to pursue a policy of neutrality through the wars but had been caught between the two superpowers of the day.³ In the years to come, British and French armies would square off in the Portuguese countryside, as a war that had already torn Europe apart descended into the Iberian peninsula. It was in this context that the Portuguese council of state took drastic measures to save the royal family, palace valuables, and the Portuguese fleet from the French. The British had also been pressing for the removal of the Portuguese court—not only to deny the French the spoils of war, but also to open Brazil up to British trade.

The Portuguese fleet finally made its escape on the morning of November 27. Flanked by four British escorts, the ships underwent last-minute checks and repairs off the Portuguese coast for what would be a difficult Atlantic crossing. The following day, French troops entered the city, taking control of the capital. Before leaving, the Portuguese prince regent, Dom João (on the throne in place of his insane mother Maria I) had appointed a council of governors to receive the French in his absence, saying that he would return as soon as the political situation allowed.

But it would be thirteen years before the Portuguese émigrés trod their native soil again. During this period, the norms of European colonialism were turned upside down. At a stroke, age-old colonial sea routes were reversed, with edicts traveling eastward across the Atlantic, and with provisions, personnel, and troops journeying out to the New World to supply the court. Lisbon, a venerable metropolis, was transformed into an outpost of its former colony; the court's new seat, the slave-market town Rio de Janeiro, assumed the role of an imperial capital. There the court faced the contradictions found in all empires, concentrated into a single city: Rio was both the seat of empire and the biggest slaving port in the Americas—an imperial showcase and the empire's sewer. As for the mother country, Portugal had become, in the words of a contemporary observer, "a colony of a colony."⁴

The Vicissitudes of Empire

The "age of discoveries" launched Portugal onto the world stage, and it was Portugal that forged the template for early European colonialism. Just two decades after the completion of Vasco da Gama's famous voyage (1497–99), Portuguese ships made astounding inroads into the trade circuits of the East. Moving into largely unmilitarized waters, they swept through the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf, sinking opposing fleets and capturing ports and offshore islands in their wake. A vast archipelago...