ABSTRACT
This article, written from the perspective of conceptual history, sheds light on the relationship between black slavery and the three fundamental political concepts of liberalism in the Age of Revolutions: representation, citizenship, and sovereignty. Its purpose is to evaluate the weight of slavery in the constitutional organization of public power in Brazil after the Independence of 1822. While several studies have recognized the importance of slavery for the political foundations of Brazil, focusing either on the issue of national unity or on the option for the monarchy as a form of government, the conceptual relations between slavery and the constitutional order remain little explored in historiography. As the constitutional history of a country is always part of a global history of constitutionalism, this article explores the problem through a comparative conceptual history of constitution-making and slavery in five political spaces: the United States (1787), France (1789-1791), Spain (1810-1812), Portugal (1821-1822) and Brazil (1823-1824).
Keywords:
conceptual history; political Atlantic history; New World black slavery; Era of Revolutions; constitutional orders