ABSTRACT
At the end of 1807 the Portuguese court set sail for Brazil, fleeing Napoleon’s troops. When he arrived in the Americas, D. João VI, who was then the Prince Regent, decreed that the Brazilian ports would open up to the ships of friendly nations, thereby bringing to an end the commercial monopoly which metropolitan Portugal had until then enjoyed. This was the beginning of the disintegration of the Luso-Brazilian Empire, which would culminate in 1822 (after the court had returned to Lisbon the previous year) with the American kingdom’s declaration of independence. These developments had the most serious consequences for Portugal’s economy, above all because of the drop of around 90 per cent which took place towards the end of the 1820s in re-exports of Brazilian colonial products, which at the beginning of the century had accounted for almost two-thirds of all foreign exports. Thus did the main source of capital accumulation evaporate, both for the mercantile bourgeoisie (especially in Lisbon) and for the state itself, the finances of which relied mainly on the customs duties charged on trade with Brazil and the outside world. 1 From the political point of view, the country also declined in importance in the international context, since it now had little more to offer its traditional ally – Great Britain – than the strategic position of the port of Lisbon. Once the Luso-Brazilian Empire had been dismantled, Portugal was left with several dispersed territories throughout the world, the remnants of earlier systems. Such was the case of the small enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu in the east, in the Indian subcontinent, the port of Macao, in Chinese territory, and Timor, in the East Indies; and in Africa, there were a few posts in the so-called ‘rivers of Guinea’, namely Bissau, Cacheu and Ziguinchor, two areas which had Luanda and Benguela as their respective centres, and a few points on the Mozambican coast, as well as Sena and Tete, on the line of the river Zambezi. In addition, there were the archipelagos of Cabo Verde and S. Tomé e Príncipe.
