Independence of Brazil (1822): Pedro I and the Cry of Ipiranga

The independence of Brazil is traditionally dated to 7 September 1822, when Prince Pedro of Braganza declared on the banks of the Ipiranga stream near São Paulo that Brazil would break with Portugal. Within weeks he was acclaimed Emperor Pedro I, and by 1825 Portugal had accepted the loss of its largest colony. Unlike most of Spanish America, Brazil won independence as a single monarchy ruled by a member of the old royal family, a path that shaped the country for the rest of the 19th century.

Background: a kingdom ruled from Rio

The roots of independence lie in the Napoleonic Wars. When French troops invaded Portugal in late 1807, the Prince Regent João, his mother Queen Maria I and thousands of courtiers sailed for Brazil under British naval escort. They reached Salvador in January 1808 and settled in Rio de Janeiro in March. For the first time a European monarchy was governed from one of its colonies.

The move transformed Brazil. João opened its ports to friendly nations, ending Portugal’s trade monopoly, and founded a national bank, a printing press, military academies and a botanical garden. In 1815 Brazil was raised to the status of a kingdom equal to Portugal within the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. João became king in 1816 and stayed in Rio even after Napoleon’s defeat, while Portugal itself was run by a regency and by British officers who had fought in the Peninsular War.

The crisis of 1820-1822

In August 1820 a liberal revolution broke out in Porto. Its leaders summoned a parliament, the Cortes, to write a constitution and demanded that the king come home. João VI sailed for Lisbon in April 1821, leaving his elder son Pedro, then 22, as regent of Brazil.

The Cortes soon tried to reverse Brazil’s gains. It moved to place the provinces directly under Lisbon, abolish institutions created in Rio and order Pedro back to Europe. Brazilian landowners, merchants and officials saw this as an attempt to return the country to colonial status.

Petitions urged the prince to stay. On 9 January 1822, a date remembered as the Dia do Fico (“I am staying” day), Pedro announced that he would remain in Brazil. He appointed José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, a scientist and politician from São Paulo, as his leading minister, and in the following months he expelled Portuguese troops from Rio and decreed that orders from Lisbon needed his approval before they took effect in Brazil.

The Cry of Ipiranga

In August 1822 Pedro travelled to São Paulo to settle local disputes. In Rio, his wife Maria Leopoldina, acting as head of the council of state, received new decrees from Lisbon that annulled his authority and labelled his ministers traitors. She and José Bonifácio sent the dispatches after him with letters urging him to act.

A courier caught up with Pedro on the afternoon of 7 September beside the Ipiranga stream on the outskirts of São Paulo. After reading the letters, according to members of his escort, he tore the Portuguese blue-and-white insignia from his hat and declared “Independence or death!” The moment became known as the Grito do Ipiranga, the Cry of Ipiranga.

Pedro returned to Rio and was acclaimed constitutional emperor on 12 October 1822, his 24th birthday. He was crowned on 1 December. A new green-and-yellow flag combined the green of the House of Braganza with the yellow associated with Leopoldina’s Habsburg family.

The war of independence

Independence was not accepted everywhere at once. Portuguese garrisons and loyal merchants held several northern and southern provinces. The longest struggle took place in Bahia, where Brazilian militias and troops besieged Salvador for over a year; the Portuguese commander finally evacuated the city on 2 July 1823, still celebrated as Bahia’s independence day.

Pedro hired Thomas Cochrane, a Scottish admiral who had commanded Chile’s navy, to build a Brazilian fleet. Cochrane chased the Portuguese convoy from Salvador and then forced Maranhão and Pará to join the empire in mid-1823. The last Portuguese troops left Montevideo, capital of the Cisplatina province (present-day Uruguay), in early 1824. Casualties were far lower than in the long wars of Spanish America, though fighting in Bahia and the north cost thousands of lives.

Diplomatic recognition followed. The United States recognised Brazil in 1824. Britain, which wanted to protect its trade with both countries, mediated a treaty signed in Rio on 29 August 1825, by which Portugal recognised Brazilian independence and Brazil agreed to pay about 2 million pounds in compensation.

Key people

• Pedro I (1798-1834): Portuguese prince who chose to lead Brazil’s separation. Energetic but impulsive, he dissolved the first constituent assembly in 1823 and imposed his own constitution in 1824.
• João VI (1767-1826): King of Portugal whose flight to Rio in 1808 made Brazil the centre of the empire. He returned to Lisbon in 1821.
• José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva (1763-1838): Pedro’s chief minister in 1822-1823, often called the “Patriarch of Independence”. He also argued, without success, for the gradual end of slavery.
• Maria Leopoldina (1797-1826): Austrian-born archduchess and Pedro’s wife, who presided over the council of state that urged the break with Portugal.
• Thomas Cochrane (1775-1860): British naval officer who commanded the Brazilian navy and secured the northern provinces.

How Brazil’s path differed from Spanish America

Spanish America broke away through more than a decade of warfare between royalists and patriots, from the May Revolution in Buenos Aires in 1810 to the Battle of Ayacucho in 1824. The former viceroyalties split into many republics, and military leaders often dominated politics for decades.

Brazil followed a different route. Because the royal family was already in Rio, independence could be led from the top by a legitimate heir, giving continuity to the courts, the bureaucracy and the social order. The landowning elite backed the monarchy largely to avoid the disorder of Spanish America and the kind of slave uprising seen in the Haitian Revolution. The result was a single state covering a territory almost as large as all of Spanish South America.

Continuity had a price. Slavery remained the foundation of the economy, and the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil continued illegally until 1850. Regional revolts, such as the Confederation of the Equator in Pernambuco in 1824, were suppressed.

Myths and facts

Myth: Independence happened in a single dramatic moment. The Cry of Ipiranga was one step in a process that ran from 1821 to 1825, including the Dia do Fico, the expulsion of Portuguese troops and the war in the provinces.

Myth: The scene looked as it does in the famous painting. Pedro Américo’s “Independence or Death!” was painted in 1888, 66 years later, and idealises the event with uniformed cavalry on fine horses. Contemporary accounts suggest a small, travel-worn party, and some say Pedro was riding a pack animal rather than a warhorse.

Timeline

• 1807, November: The Portuguese royal family leaves Lisbon for Brazil ahead of a French invasion.
• 1815, 16 December: Brazil becomes a kingdom within the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.
• 1821, April: João VI returns to Portugal, leaving Pedro as regent.
• 1822, 9 January: Pedro announces he will stay in Brazil (Dia do Fico).
• 1822, 7 September: The Cry of Ipiranga near São Paulo.
• 1822, 12 October: Pedro is acclaimed Emperor of Brazil.
• 1823, 2 July: Portuguese forces evacuate Salvador, Bahia.
• 1824, 25 March: Pedro I grants Brazil’s first constitution.
• 1825, 29 August: Portugal recognises Brazilian independence.
• 1831, 7 April: Pedro I abdicates in favour of his son, Pedro II.

Why it matters

Brazil’s independence created the largest state in Latin America and the only lasting monarchy in the Americas, an empire that survived until 1889. Its peaceful-seeming transition preserved national unity but also preserved slavery, which Brazil abolished only with the Golden Law of 1888. The 7 September holiday remains Brazil’s main national celebration.