A “spirit of association” took hold of Brazilian businessmen and lawmakers in the Regency period of the 1830s. This spirit manifested itself in the Rio Doce Company drive, which directly inspired Brazilians to launch the first homegrown colonization companies in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. This chapter traces the trajectory of these pioneering domestic enterprises and examines their operations and their meanings in the context of continuous logistical and political challenges both at home and abroad. Ultimately, these companies set a precedent in institutionalizing reception and conveyance mechanisms, lobbying successfully for pro-colonization policies, and collaborating with the Brazilian diplomatic corps to build a powerful international network of migrant recruitment overseas. Despite these companies’ broad appeal among quarreling elites, both faltered amid the financial crisis of 1837,. The colono trade they spurred in periodic overlap with the illegal slave trade, however, opened the door for continued undocumented migrations from the Azores.

This chapter synthesizes the history of the monarchy in Brazil from the Portuguese court’s 1807 exile to Rio de Janeiro to the end of the Regency in 1840. It addresses the European threats to the Portuguese monarchy, its successes in Brazil, and its adaptation to the Atlantic revolutionary era. It focuses on the actions of two monarchs, João VI and Pedro, João’s heir in both the old Portuguese kingdom and the new Brazilian one, which Pedro made independent and transformed into the Empire of Brazil, in 1822. It goes on to discuss Pedro I’s struggle (1822-1831) for domination against the Brazilian elite, and the results, through the Regency (1831-1840) following Pedro I’s abdication. Of particular significance in all of this are international and social issues bound up with the continued expansion of African slavery and its Atlantic trade. In both the diplomacy between João VI and his crucial English allies, the abolition of that trade loomed large. It was central, too, in the struggles between Pedro I and his parliamentary opposition. Indeed, slavery’s maintenance as foundational to the economy, the society, and those who dominated both, as well as the state, is made clear in analyzing the monarchy’s politics during 1822-1840. Slavery affected the monarchy’s survival, transformation, and the nature of party formation and ideology in the constitutional monarchy that emerged by 1840.

The years spent in Paris spanning the death of Louis XIV and the Regency of Philippe d’Orléans. Montesquieu’s social contacts and literary interests. Sale of his office and unexpected departure from parlement in 1726. Consolidation of his fortune and social position.

When grave illness compelled rulers to plan for the likelihood of a child’s succession, their chief concern was not that their young son would be passed over as king. Instead, most dying rulers focused on making collaborative arrangements for protecting the kingdom and supporting the child in rule. This chapter examines some of the evidence for the preparations dying kings made as they gathered to their side men and women whose involvement would be crucial for the child’s continuing education and the realm’s administration. The first two sections draw attention to shifts over time in familial attendance at royal deathbeds and in the testamentary records of rulers’ intentions. The actions of kings and queens both before and at their deathbeds suggest hesitancy to impose a wardship model upon royal children, especially upon the new boy king, and this royal reluctance is examined in greater detail in the chapter’s third and final part. Even when it became apparent an infant or child would succeed, kings eschewed entrusting their sons and kingdoms to the care of individual magnates, preferring collaborative arrangements in which the queen often took a prominent role.

This reassessment of guardianship terminology interrogates how medieval writers described the administrative, governmental, tutorial and emotional responsibilities of a boy king’s guardians. Analysing the vocabulary used to describe child kingship in royal documents, letters, chronicles, annals and various other sources rapidly reveals the inadequacies of the terms ‘regent’ and ‘regency’ before the fourteenth century at the earliest. Those writing while a boy was king, or in the years immediately after, made a sharp distinction between the conception of royal rule, on the one hand, and the duties, actions and responsibilities of those supporting the child ruler, on the other. This chapter interrogates, in turn, how writers distinguished between the terminology of royal rule, government and administration, education and nurture, and legal wardship and protection. Although ideas concerning the guardianship of minors prominently influenced representations of child kingship, this was only one aspect of a much broader conception of a child’s rule and the protection they and their kingdom required.

After a fourteen-year boyar regency, Ivan the Terrible was crowned tsar and married to Anastasiia Romanova. In 1553 the tsar’s illness led to a succession crisis: some boyars hesitated to swear loyalty to his infant son. The birth of two more sons, Ivan and Fyodor, guaranteed an heir. As the oldest boy grew up, Tsar Ivan brought him to meetings with boyars and ambassadors, took him along for military campaigns, and had him married. The son’s untimely death left his younger brother the heir. Tsar Fyodor was incapable of effective rule and did not produce a son, leading to the election of his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, as his heir.