ABSTRACT
The author expresses his gratitude to Trinity College, Cambridge and the British Academy, both of which generously funded research trips to Brazil and Portugal in 2007 and 2008. The chapter has two, overlapping objectives: first, to approach Silva Lisboa's obra and political engagement through the lens of enlightened reform and second, to employ Silva Lisboa's thought and career in order to interrogate the concept's versatility and critically appraise its application to Brazil. Silva Lisboa fits uneasily, then, in the traditional periodisation of enlightened reform because of the survival, indeed renaissance and expansion, of the Old Regime in Brazil. Unlike many other figures commonly associated with enlightened reform, Silva Lisboa responded to the late eighteenth-century upheavals in Europe with the benefit of hindsight. A fuller appreciation of the different contexts in which colonial and metropolitan actors operated would facilitate the recognition of similarities of enlightened reform on both shores of the Atlantic.
