ABSTRACT
Consequence of the reformist investment of the Portuguese Crown and with decades of dedication to the enhancement and modernisation of the Luso-Brazilian monarchy, it was almost at the age of 60 that José Bonifácio was confronted with the political events that led to the independence of Brazil and the emergence of a nationalist ideological matrix. For most of his life, the idea of Brazil as a political organisation external to the Portuguese monarchy would have been absolutely inconceivable, so much so that we can easily imagine him adapting to the Luso-Brazilian context the astonishment of his companions in the Parisian Enlightenment of a few decades earlier. “Comment peut on être Brésilien?” could well have been one of the many phrases that Bonifácio wrote down in his notes in the face of the conjecture of an autonomous Brazilian feeling. I argue in this text that the idea of an Atlantic empire was what always guided José Bonifácio’s thought and reformist intentions, and that it is within this key that we should read his action and understand his apparent paradoxes.
Keywords:
Luso-Brazilian Reformism; Atlantic Empire; conservatism; liberalism; constitutionalism; Brazilian Independence