ABSTRACT
The other dimension of this reconfiguration of monarchy and empire-the meanings and consequences of the transfer of the court within the New World-will be examined throughout this book. Here, I begin by exploring the politics of royal exile in Rio de Janeiro as they were articulated by two groups: the Portuguese exiles and the city’s elite residents. The exiles, those who accompanied the prince regent to Rio or joined him there during the course of the Peninsular War, included members of the Portuguese nobility, royal advisors, confessors, servants, and attendants.3 The city’s elites, in turn, were similarly diverse: clerics, government officials, merchants, and landowners, some who were born in Rio, some who had made the city their long-term residence. The exiles and Rio’s residents shared cultural and political alle giances, cultivated, in some cases, through study in Portugal, royal service, and mar riage.4 They were all distinguished vassals of the Portuguese crown and their
appearance together at public commemorations in Rio was construed readily, as one observer noted, to be a perfect and transformative aggregation of power and prestige. Beginning in 1808, the observer explained, they formed “a Body so respectable that Rio de Janeiro seemed to be a New City.”5
