ABSTRACT
José da Silva Lisboa (1756-1835), a Brazilian-Portuguese political economy writer and a controversial figure in the Brazilian political scene, is taken as a prototypical liberal both in Portugal and in Brazil. Since the edition of his first political economy book, Princípios de Economia Política (1804, Princípios hereafter),1 he defended liberal economic principles and emphasized his strong allegiance to Adam Smith’s liberalism. His many books on political economy represented not only a defense of free trade and free industry: they were also conceived as instruments for the diffusion of the emerging science of political economy among Portuguese speaking audiences.
