Portugueses, americanos, brasileiros: identidades políticas na crise do Antigo Regime luso-americano

Abstract

This text presents a general appraisal of the political identities' historical development in Portuguese America, stressing the references concerning the idea of an "America". A Luso-American identity was both a revealing trace of the process of the Portuguese Ancien Régime crises (from the mid Eighteenth Century on), and also a decisive factor towards the development of a project of political separation between Brazil and Portugal, that came to life on 1822.