Colonization is not commonly associated with the Regency period in the history of Imperial Brazil. Historians have long thought that in the tumultuous 1830s colonization endeavors subsided, in large part due to the suspension of government funding in 1830. Using primary documentation from diverse archives, this article demonstrates that the Regency years were in fact crucial for the development of the business of colonization in Brazil. As a time of much political experimentation, the Regency established a blueprint for how colonization would be administered in the following decades, enacting promotional policies and favoring private companies as the ideal vehicles to carry it out. But these decisions were not simply a reflection of the sovereign will of political elites in post-independence Brazil, as foreign processes and events in the Atlantic world directly shaped the development of colonization dynamics.
colonization; immigration; Regency
