A Federal Nation or a Nation between two hemispheres?: The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brasil and Algarves and Portuguese colonial "model" during the nineteenth century

Abstract

The political representation of the overseas provinces in the Portuguese parliament became, during Portuguese first constitutional debates (1820-1822), the most important symbol of the equalitarian principle adopted by the liberal regime in what concerned the "ancient colonies". According to it, the overseas deputies would have a seat in Portuguese parliament, where they could debate the destinies of a pluricontinental Nation. In this article, I try to address three main topics regarding this discussion. In the first place, I state that the concept of a pluricontinental unitary nation was not only an alternative to the ancient "colonial system", but also an alternative to the "federal model" that was being proposed, from the second half of the eighteenth century on, by authors who criticized Imperial relationships. In the second place, I show how the tensions generated by that concept of Nation, tensions which emerged during the discussion on the regulation of the overseas political representation, had already been anticipated by the contemporary political thought, namely in the works of Jeremy Bentham. Finally, I will show that this same concept have served, during the whole nineteenth century, as an argument to reject the creation of colonial legislative assemblies in Portuguese Africa and India, contributing to the preservation of a formally centralized model of administering the Empire.