How did Brazil become independent from Portugal?

A kingdom that would not go back

Brazil’s road to independence starts in 1808, when Portugal’s royal court, fleeing Napoleon’s invasion, crossed the Atlantic and settled in Rio de Janeiro. For thirteen years a European empire was governed from South America. In 1815 Brazil was raised to a kingdom, joined to Portugal and, on paper, no longer a colony. The king behind those moves is in Who was John VI of Portugal?.

Then Portugal had its own revolution. In 1820 liberals in Porto demanded a constitution, an elected parliament, the Cortes, and the king’s return. João VI sailed home on April 26, 1821, leaving his son Pedro, 22, in Rio as prince regent. The Cortes then ruled that each Brazilian province would answer directly to Lisbon, not to Rio, and summoned the prince:

That the Prince Royal return to Portugal as soon as possible. […] That His Royal Highness, as soon as he reaches Portugal, go on to travel incognito to the Courts and Kingdoms of Spain, France and England…

Many merchants and planters of the center-south read the order as a plan to make Brazil a colony again. They had much to lose: since 1808 the ports had been open to foreign ships, and Rio was the center of their business.

Disobedience, one step at a time

What followed was not one gesture but a run of defiant acts, each bigger than the last:

• January 9, 1822: Rio hands Pedro a petition with more than 8,000 signatures, and he agrees to stay: the Dia do Fico, the Day of Staying.
• January 16: José Bonifácio, a mineralogist from Santos, takes the strongest seat in the government.
• May 4: the cumpra-se decree: no order from the Cortes is valid in Brazil without Pedro’s approval.
• May 13: Pedro accepts the title of Perpetual Defender of Brazil.
• June 3: he calls a constituent assembly.
• September 2: in Rio, the Council of State, chaired by his wife Leopoldina, argues for a clean break.
• September 7: near the Ipiranga stream in São Paulo, Pedro proclaims Brazil separated from Portugal.
• October 12: on his 24th birthday, he is acclaimed emperor in Rio’s Campo de Santana.
• December 1: he is crowned.

What Leopoldina did on September 2 is in Did Maria Leopoldina sign Brazil’s independence?. The cry itself, and the mule the prince was riding, are in Who said ‘Independence or Death’? and Did Dom Pedro I ride a horse or a mule?.

Which date counts?

Brazilians celebrate September 7. People at the time mostly did not. Hardly anyone reported the cry that month; what contemporaries saw as the founding act was the acclamation of October 12, before the crowds and the troops in Rio. September 7 became a national festivity by law only in 1826, and a public holiday in 1949. Unlike most of its neighbors, Brazil also came out of it a monarchy, ruled by the heir of the very king it had broken away from.

A war and a bill

A proclamation was not enough. Garrisons loyal to Lisbon held out in Bahia, Maranhão, Piauí, Pará and the Cisplatina, today’s Uruguay, and the fighting lasted until late 1823, with thousands dead. Portugal recognized Brazil only on August 29, 1825, in a treaty brokered by Britain. The price was 2 million pounds, which Brazil borrowed in London: the country’s first foreign debt. João VI even kept an honorary title, Emperor of Brazil.

Historians still argue over what 1822 was. Some see a real break: a war, ordinary people under arms, a new country. Others see a deal among elites, who changed governments without changing society. Both point to facts, and one number weighs on the debate: about 1.5 million people, a third of the population, were still enslaved after independence, as they would be until 1888.