ABSTRACT
The 19th century began as the previous one had ended, with the struggles for the independence of the American colonies against the European colonial monarchies. The ideas of the nation and of the people that constitute it, of public opinion that gives them a joint identity, were or gave a new consistency to the literature of all the liberal publicists of the early eight hundred, that is, the immediate link between thought and action. This connection was the basis of the concept of change in the new way of looking at politics, as knowledge and as a method of understanding the world. The independence of Brazil in the world context in which it happened contributed to the theorization and debate of the colonial idea, of empire and imperialism. Without wanting to exhaust the subject it is intended to establish here a bridge of understanding, between this debate today and at the time it happened.
Keywords:
Independence of Brazil; colonialism; liberalism; constitutionalism; opinion journalism