Abstract

This article intends to focus the concept of liberalism in Brazil between 1750 and 1850, pointing out some differences of the Brazilian speeches towards Europe and Spanish America. Besides, the concept of liberalism is considered in its immediate conceptual neighborhood (liberals, representative government, constitution) and its contra-concepts (absolutism, despotism, hunchbackism) in the context of the debates of independence and the practice of party system during the first half of the nineteenth century.