The crisis in the Portuguese Empire was already underway in 1807, with some underlying causes found further back in time.
It created the conditions for the political split between Brazil and Portugal, a development that virtually nobody imagined at the start of the 19th century. The process that started in 1807 prompted the separation and defined its most lasting results: the emergence of a Brazilian state and nation that would consolidate itself over the next century preserving its distinctive features. The independence process was strongly marked by progressive distancing between the past and the future. In this sense, the self-proclaimed revolutionary nature of the independence process fits neatly into the broader political and intellectual context of the time, full of conceptual innovations.
The continuity of Brazilian independence is, however, still the most common aspect highlighted by most historians and nonhistorians. It is true that the creation of the Empire of Brazil neither abolished slavery, nor upended social hierarchies for the vast majority of the population, nor modified the highly concentrated nature of land distribution and its overwhelming focus on sustaining an export economy built during centuries of Portuguese colonization. Yet, given the innovations involved in the creation of the Empire of Brazil and their significance in the first decades of the 19th century, the understanding of this history gains depth, complexity, and consistency if one replaces the simple and banal idea of preservation of slavery, social hierarchies, territoriality or monarchy with that of re-creation and reorganization of these elements. If not seen in this light, the history of Brazilian independence silences an array of diverse voices and actors who had been growing increasingly accustomed to participating in politics since the end of the previous century.
João Paulo Pimenta. Independence: Change and Continuity. In: Oxford Research
Encyclopedia of Latin American History. Internet: <www.oxfordre.com> (adapted).
