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 Lucia Maria Bastos Pereira das Neves The forgotten in the independence process: a history to be made

Almanack, Guarulhos, n. 25, ef00220, 2020 http://doi.org/10.1590/2236-463325ef00220 the formulation of questions that represented interests of different sectors of society, understood from the experience that contemporaries experienced in the past, leading to the accumulation of experiences and the possibility of rising a different horizon of expectations, formulated through the new political languages ​​available - that of constitutionalism and that of liberalism. By ignoring them we run the risk of making anachronistic interpretations.

The identification and knowledge of its writers, often anonymous, contribute, in turn, to map those who are part of this game. Fundamental agents, they elaborated arguments that made possible the readings of the process, although they were often forgotten. Not by chance, many of the authors mentioned were not able to find a unique portrait. They were men, however, who, as a general rule, were known as novelties of the time and intended to assure a different future from that experienced in the politics of the old regime. These individuals climbed political posts throughout the First Reign depending on the ties of the sociability levels acquired and made it possible to see how the old Portuguese Empire was interconnected between Europe, America and Africa. It is, therefore, a direction of investigation that can take men in their diversity and concrete experience.

To conclude, it is worth to highlight the value that the study of those forgotten allows to go beyond the borders of a history whose fulcrum meets an idea of nation. Through meetings, exchanges and contacts between different parts of the Portuguese Empire, as narratives of their actions pointed to a need to know and comparatively analyze the selection processes of English America and Hispanic America. From this effort, new assumptions about the concept of independence (or independences) can emerge at that time. No background, from this point of view, or that is shown is how much the Luso-Brazilian Empire was not indifferent to the upheavals that the West experienced between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. In other words, they were not indifferent to this Sattelzeit, that is - for R. Koselleck and the other authors of the Forum