1822: How a Prince Who Wanted to Be a Brazilian Emperor, a Scottish Admiral and a Wise Man Called José Bonifácio Brought Off the Most Important Event in Brazil's History

Since 1808, Rio de Janeiro had housed the Portuguese court, which had fled Napoleon. For thirteen years, the city served as the seat of an empire that was still, on paper, a colony of Portugal. Banks, a press, colleges and direct trade with England were born in this period, changing the balance between the mother country and the colony.

This arrangement bothered Portugal. The old mother country watched its own territory grow poorer while Rio de Janeiro concentrated power, money and decision-making. Lisbon demanded the king back and wanted to reduce Brazil once again to the condition of an ordinary colony, without the privileges gained during the court's stay.

It was in this climate of resentment that the Porto Revolution broke out in 1820: a Portuguese liberal movement that demanded a Constitution, the end of absolutism and, above all, the immediate return of Dom João VI. The book uses this backdrop to explain why 1822 doesn't come out of nowhere.

Pressured by the Cortes of Lisbon, Dom João VI sailed back to Portugal in April 1821, after thirteen years in Rio de Janeiro. He took with him a good part of the money available in the treasury and left his eldest son, Dom Pedro, as prince regent of the Kingdom of Brazil.

The order Dom João VI gave his son, according to the book, was ambiguous and full of calculation at the same time: if Brazil wanted to separate from Portugal, it was better for Dom Pedro himself to lead that separation than to hand the crown to some random adventurer.

The Cortes of Lisbon, however, did not want an autonomous Brazil with a prince at its head. They wanted to reduce the former viceroyalty to a set of loose provinces, each reporting directly to Portugal, and they sent an express order for Dom Pedro to return to Europe too.

In January 1822, Dom Pedro received an order from Lisbon to sail back to Portugal. Politicians and merchants in Rio, fearing that the prince's departure would return Brazil to the status of an ordinary colony, handed him a petition asking him to stay.

On January 9, 1822, Dom Pedro answered publicly that he would stay: an episode that became known as the Dia do Fico, the Day of "I Will Stay." It was not yet a declaration of independence, but it was the first public act of disobedience toward the Portuguese Cortes.

The book shows that the decision involved political calculation on both sides: the groups in Rio wanted to keep the economic privileges won since 1808, and Dom Pedro saw a chance to build power of his own, without depending on a distant parliament in Lisbon.