1808: The Flight Of The Emperor (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
On the eve of Prince João’s arrival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil consisted of a jumble of more or less autonomous regions without commerce or any other form of relations between them, having in common only the Portuguese language and the crown in Lisbon on the other side of the Atlantic. “Each captaincy had its own government, small militia and small treasury; communication between them was precarious, as each generally ignored the existence of the other,” recorded French naturalist August Saint-Hilaire, who traversed the country from north to south between 1816 and 1822. “There was no Brazil with a common center. It was an immense circle, whose rays converged very far from its circumference.”1 Not even the word brasileiro (Brazilian) adequately referred to people born in Brazil. Pamphlets and articles published at the beginning of the nineteenth century discussed whether the right term was brasileiro, brasiliense, or brasiliano. Journalist Hipólito da Costa, owner of the Correio Braziliense newspaper, published in London, believed that Europeans born in Brazil should be called brasilienses.2 In his opinion, a brasileiro was a Portuguese or foreigner who moved to the country, while a brasiliano was an indigenous person.3 “Brazil was nothing more than a geographic unit formed by provinces deeply estranged from one other,”
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