ABSTRACT
The Portuguese school historiography has tried to generate certain consensuses about the separation between Brazil and Portugal. In order to reveal them, we have consulted a universe of 61 textbooks aimed at the distinct phases of Lusitanian school education, both inland and overseas, published between 1880-1960. The examination of this material will show the subtlety of the analytical maneuvers around the sensitive topic, which, as a rule, intended to minimize the focus on the historical rupture and its dire consequences for the Portuguese Empire. Nevertheless, the subject also gave rise to strategic silences, if not the formulation of superficial summaries, in order to avoid the Brazilian episode becoming an independence-inspired paradigm in the hands of students from overseas schools, which adopted textbooks prepared in the metropolis. Simultaneously, I will discuss the political-ideological and historiographical transformations that shaped the school approaches to Brazil’s autonomy process within the proposed chronological frame.
Keywords:
Independence of Brazil; School textbooks; Portuguese school historiography