Starting from the analysis of the political meaning of Brazil and Brazilian in documents written by colonists in the mid 18th century, the article shows the analytical importance of the deviant character of the American variants of the ancien régime type Portuguese social matrix. Working with the concepts of memory and experience, it points out the idea that, once the Portuguese national structures of both hemispheres became asymmetric (during the revolutionary conjuncture of the 1820s), they were also unable to fit into the same constitutional framework.
National Identity; Brazilian National State; Colony; Independence; Enslavement
