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In late November 1807, as General Junot's French army neared Lisbon, Prince Regent Dom João, his mentally ill mother Queen Maria I, and roughly 10,000–15,000 courtiers, officials and servants boarded a fleet in chaos, escorted by the Royal Navy. They reached Brazil in early 1808, and Rio de Janeiro served as the capital of the Portuguese empire until 1821. It is the only case of a European monarchy ruling its empire from a colony.
Gomes argues that Dom João's much-mocked indecision and escape was, in effect, a shrewd survival move. By leaving under British protection, he kept the Braganza dynasty, the treasury and the machinery of state out of Napoleon's hands, while the Spanish Bourbons who stayed were captured and deposed. A weak ruler can preserve power by refusing to fight on terms the stronger enemy sets.
Moving the court turned Rio into an imperial capital within a few years: ports opened to friendly nations in 1808, and the city gained a bank, a printing press, schools, a botanical garden and a national library, and Brazil was raised to a kingdom equal to Portugal in 1815. Gomes presents these institutions and this new status as making a return to colonial subordination much harder to accept. That helped set Brazil on the road to the 1822 break, though the break itself came out of later political struggle.
British naval escort was not charity. In return, Britain got the 1808 port opening and the 1810 treaties, which gave British goods lower tariffs than Portuguese goods and gave Britain extraterritorial legal privileges. Read the rescue as a transaction, and the rescued state's sovereignty turns out to be the price paid for its survival.