Brazil and the Afro-Asian World: a Decolonial Approach

Abstract

The Brazilian path to political emancipation that culminated two centuries ago was a rather peculiar one. After becoming the head of the Portuguese empire in 1808, Brazil became an independent country under the rule of the same royal family that governed the colony. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the Brazilian independence did not entail a delinking from Portugal, due to which the Brazilian Western identity was taken for granted. We will also discuss how this absence of delinking had consequences in the long run. Despite the Brazilian colonial past, several intellectuals and foreign policymakers assumed the Brazilian Western identity and made disdainful and hostile comments when writing on the Afro-Asian decolonization process.