Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Francisco Colom González and Angel Rivero -- Introduction / Francisco Colom and Angel Rivero -- Brazil and the Languages of Modernity / Rubem Barboza Filho -- Empire, Nation, and Republic in the Transformation of the Modern Hispanic World / Anthony Pagden -- Ibero-American Republican Humanism and the Intellectual Roots of Mexican Independence / Ambrosio Velasco -- Decorum and Liberty in the Spanish-American Revolutions of Independence / José María Hernández -- The American Independences and the Crisis of the Ancien Régime Republic: A Comparative View of the United States and Brazil / Cicero Araujo and Gabriela Nunes Ferreira -- The Tradition of Liberty in Canada at the End of the Eighteenth Century / Michel Ducharme -- The Portuguese Uprising of 1820: A Forgotten Atlantic Revolution / Angel Rivero -- Liberal Ideas and Patrimonial Practices in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America / Francisco Colom González -- Index / Francisco Colom González and Angel Rivero.

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This volume addresses the political traditions that flourished in regions traditionally neglected by Atlantic history, but which are nevertheless indispensable for a comprehensive interpretation of political modernity. The history of political liberty simply cannot be reconstructed without taking into account the role of the Atlantic as a space for the circulation of ideas. The different chapters trace the origins of the Atlantic notions of liberty in the crisis of the colonial world, in the diverse processes that led to independence from the metropolis, and in the subsequent efforts to build a constitutional order. The book takes an innovative approach by putting together experiences of the English, Portuguese, and Spanish Atlantic and by dealing with political ideas as discursive and socially embedded practices.