The monarchical engagement of Portuguese immigrants in Brazil: A case of nineteenth-century transnational politics

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the transnational political practices of the Portuguese immigrant community in Brazil during the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. In the light of fresh empirical evidence, it aims to prove the true impact of the political engagement of those Portuguese living abroad during the course of late nineteenth-century political changes in Portugal. It focuses particularly on the struggle between Portuguese monarchist and republican parties to captivate the political sympathy of the emigrants and, later on, on the transatlantic monarchical counter-revolutionary network created after the republican revolution in 1910. It argues that this sort of migrant political activity can be analyzed beyond the framework of the diffusion of domestic politics and acknowledged as a truly transnational phenomenon. Therefore, it seeks to demonstrate how the transnational nature of these Portuguese migrants’ action was decisive to their success on seriously compromising the first republican experience in Portugal.