During the Napoleonic wars in which Napoleon had invaded Portugal 3 times led the royal family of Portugal to flee to their colony in Brazil in the year of 1808. The king’s arrival in Portugal received a lot of negative attention from the indigenous people who had inhabited the Atlantic Forest within the boundaries of Brazil after he established. The king of Portugal had an agenda to spread civilization into these forested areas and to develop more ways to bring in wealth for the colony. The king’s main focus was to establish Brazil as a kingdom in which he did during his 13 years in Brazil.
The king experienced violence upon his first year of arriving to the colony. There had been accounts of cannibalism within the indigenous people which gave the king only one decision which was to engage in war against the Botocudo Indians. Knocking out the Botocudo Indians would also pave a way to carry out the King’s agenda of pushing civilization inland and using up the land’s resources. The Portuguese and the indigenous people had actually been fighting for centuries until Prince Regent Joao had defeated the Botocudo Indians. Prince Joao had also opened up trade with friendly nations including Great Britain.
In 1820, the constitutionalist revolution had broke out in Portugal which led to the formation of the Constituent Assembly of Cortes. The Cortes had demanded the royal family to return to Portugal in which they did in 1821. In 1822, Portugal came out with their Constitution. After leaving Brazil to return back to Portugal, the king left his son Prince Dom Pedro to rule over Brazil. The Portuguese government wanted to take away Brazil’s freedom to have political autonomy over their kingdom. This led to Brazilian leaders asking for Prince Pedro to allow Brazil to become an independent nation. Pedro declared Brazil’s independence on September 7th 1822 and was later appointed Emperor of the Nation on October 12th 1822. This of course led to war against the Portuguese which ended in 1824 with the last Portuguese garrison surrendering to commander Sinian Kersey.
Egan, Clifford L. “On the Fringe of the Napoleonic Catastrophe: Joel Barlow’s Letters from Central and Eastern Europe, 1812 .” 1812.
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