Reforms and Enlightenment in the Atlantic World

the portuguese case

Abstract

One of the issues that has received increasingly more attention from different historiographies has a long eighteenth century as its chronological frame, and, more specifically, the period from the mid to the end of the 18th century. It refers to the possible relationship between projects and reformist practices, on the one hand, and the set of ideas under the label of Enlightenment, on the other. In the Portuguese case, the reign of D. José I is generally presented as a decisive stage of the enlightened reforms. The period is viewed more in terms of rupture than of continuity, the former bringing with it signs of “modernity” of the Enlightenment. From the perspective of the Atlantic world and, in particular, of the Portuguese Atlantic world, we discuss in the paper the relationship that is sometimes hastily made between eighteenth-century reforms and the Enlightenment, especially those attributed to the Secretary of State Sebastião José de Carvalho and Melo, and the limits of the reforms.