Profile
André is a historian of Latin America specialising in Brazil and the history of political thought. His current project, The Other American Empire: Brazil, 1817-1897, seeks to answer one of the most enduring questions of Latin American history: why did Brazil remain unified after independence while Spanish America did not? This project combines comparative, imperial, and intellectual history to understand Brazil alongside other nineteenth-century ‘imperial states’, such as Mexico and the United States.
Previously, André taught at the University of Edinburgh, University College London, and the University of Oxford, where he completed his DPhil. His first book, Republicanism and the State between Brazil and the River Plate: Rio Grande do Sul, 1808-1845, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. It examines the 1836-1845 Rio Grandense Republic, a separatist attempt in southern Brazil, and the transnational revolutionary networks underpinning it. André is an Associate Member of the Royal Historical Society.
Research
Publications
‘The Surprising Survival of Constitutionalism in the Caudillo Republic of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, 1836–1845’, The Historical Journal, 67/5 (2024), pp. 1004-1024.
‘Vagrancy Laws and Forced Labour in Post-Colonial Brazil, 1824-1840’, in Timo Schaefer (ed.), The Social History of Law in Post-Colonial Latin America, (The British Academy, forthcoming).
‘Noções de Estado na Região Platina e no Rio Grande do Sul’, in Murillo Dias Winter and Jonas Moreira Vargas (eds.), Tempos turbulentos: A fronteira sul em guerra na Era das Revoluções (1750-1850), (Editora Jaguatirica, Rio de Janeiro, 2025), pp. 415-444.
‘De pátria a nación: Rio Grande do Sul, 1835-1845’, in Gabriel Entin and Jorge Myers (eds.), Itinerarios de un metaconcepto: La comunidad en el siglo xix latinoamericano, trans. María Inés Castagnino, (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Ediciones, Madrid, 2024), pp. 119-140.
‘La révolution du Pernambouc au Brésil’, in Quentin Deluermoz, Emmanuel Fureix and Clément Thibaud (eds.), Les mondes de 1848, trans. Clément Thibaud, (Éditions Champ Vallon, Ceyzérieu, 2023), pp. 313-325.