1808: The Flight of the Emperor

July 8, 2013
Incapable of fending off Napoleon, Portugal’s Prince Regent João —ruling since 1799 in the stead of his demented mother—bluffed France with promises of surrender while signing a secret agreement with Britain to secure safe passage to Brazil for João and his entire court, comprising up to 15,000 people. On November 29, 1807, the fleet set sail from Lisbon, leaving Portugal at the mercy of Napoleon (who once declared João “the only one who tricked me”). During the 13 years that João reigned in exile from Rio de Janeiro, Portugal lost one-sixth of its population—half a million people—due to emigration, starvation, or in battle. Meanwhile, “the idle, corrupt, and wasteful” royal court stayed financially afloat by levying taxes on Brazilians and granting titles in exchange for donations from wealthy colonists—many of them slave traffickers. Nevertheless, the weird king (he had a “crippling fear of crustaceans and thunder” and had a valet regularly masturbate him) raised Brazil to the status of a kingdom in union with Portugal, improved infrastructure, reorganized the government, promoted the arts, and essentially began the process of decolonization. Despite Nevins’s awkward translation, Gomes’s (1822: The Prince Left Behind) account is fascinating. Illus. and 2 maps. Agent: Jonah Straus, Straus Literary.

July 15, 2013
A journalist's highly readable account of Portuguese monarch Joao VI's historic 1808 flight from Europe and subsequent exile in Brazil. In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself emperor of the French. But by 1807, the year Gomes' book opens, he "ruled as absolute lord of Europe." Aside from Britain, only one continental nation, Portugal, remained unconquered. Unwilling to surrender but unable to fend off a full-scale invasion, the fearful and often indecisive Prince Regent Joao VI, whose "sickly obesity gave him the air of a peaceful dullard," deceived Napoleon long enough to transfer his entire court to Brazil. Shepherded by the indomitable British navy, the trans-Atlantic voyage was fraught with challenges for the Portuguese ruler and his retinue, who faced the ever-present risk of disease. But it was Joao's abandoned people who paid the price for his ultimately successful flight. By 1814, 500,000 Portuguese had starved or died or fled the country to escape the chaos created in the wake of their monarch's departure. Meanwhile, the court lived comfortably in sultry Rio de Janeiro. The greedy beneficiaries of the colony's mineral and agricultural wealth, Joao and his nouveau riche ministers still managed to lay down the cornerstones of a national infrastructure. They built roads, schools and factories, opened up Brazilian ports to trade with other countries and united quarreling colonial provinces. The king many dismissed as unfit to rule departed in 1821, with only one-third his retinue, to return to a Portugal wracked by chaos and revolution. In a grand twist of historical irony, what he left behind became the makings of a vibrantly complex society that now stands poised to become a major economic power. A well-researched, engaging history.

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August 1, 2013

In 1807, the royal court of Portugal fled Napoleon's armies by sailing for colonial Brazil. Brazilian journalist Gomes's popular history, a best seller in its original 2007 publication, recounts how a sleepy Rio de Janeiro welcomed Europe's most conservative and absolute monarchy. Prince Regent Dom Joao and his 10,000 or so parasites found themselves in a beautiful but squalid town of 60,000 people, perhaps half of them slaves. Among those in the prince regent's train were his mother, the mad Queen Maria I, and his wife, Carlota, who participated in several unsuccessful coups against him. Not until 1821, as King Joao VI, did he reluctantly return to Portugal as a constitutional monarch while his son Pedro remained behind as nominal monarch of an independent Brazil. VERDICT Unfortunately, this book is not nearly as much fun as it should be. Gomes's work (translated awkwardly by Nevins) takes a surprisingly Eurocentric view of the royal family's time in Brazil. The author argues that the presence of the Portuguese court propelled backward Brazil toward improved education, scientific exploration, and independence. Readers might mistakenly think no Brazilian culture existed before the royals arrived. Nonetheless, this book could make good airline reading on your next flight to Rio.--Stewart Desmond, New York

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