Forced to flee across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil when troops of the Emperor Napoleon I invaded Portugal, he found himself faced there with liberal revolts; he was compelled to return to Europe amid new conflicts.

Notwithstanding these tribulations John left a lasting mark, especially in Brazil, where he helped to create numerous institutions and services that laid a foundation for national autonomy, and many historians consider him to be a true mastermind of the modern Brazilian state.

João Maria José Francisco Xavier de Paula Luís António Domingos Rafael was born 13 May 1767 during the reign of his maternal grandfather, King Dom Joseph I of Portugal.

[5] In 1785, Henrique de Meneses, 3rd Marquis of Louriçal, arranged a marriage between John and Infanta Carlota Joaquina of Spain, daughter of the Prince and Princess of Asturias (later King Charles IV and Queen Maria Luisa).

The Archbishop had been a powerful political figure, influencing a controversial choice of the Queen's ministers that favored John, but not without encountering strong opposition from important fidalgos who had ambitions for those posts.

For as long as he could, he pretended an apparent submission to France, to the point of suggesting to King George III of the United Kingdom the declaration of a fictitious state of war between their countries, but he did not obey the dictates of Napoleon's Continental System (a blockade against Great Britain).

[16] By this time, the Prince Regent, accompanied by the entire royal family and a large following of nobles, state functionaries and servants, had already embarked, leaving the government under a regency with the recommendation that the army not engage in hostilities with the invader.

The residents offered to construct a luxurious palace as a home for the royal family, but John declined and continued his voyage, having already announced to various nations his intention to make his capital at Rio de Janeiro.

With a government, the essential apparatus of a sovereign state became inevitable: the senior civil, religious, and military officials, aristocrats and liberal professionals, skilled artisans, and public servants.

To meet the needs of other nobles, and to install new government offices, innumerable small residences were hastily expropriated, their proprietors arbitrarily ejected, at times violently in the face of resistance.

Merchant Elias Antônio Lopes offered his country house, the Quinta da Boa Vista, a sumptuous villa in excellent location that immediately met with the prince's satisfaction.

According to painter Henry L’Evêque, "the Prince, accompanied by a Secretary of State, a Chamberlain and some household officials, received all the petitions that were presented to him; listened attentively to all the complaints, all the requests of the applicants; consoled one, encouraged others....

The British representative to the Congress also ended up supporting the idea, which resulted in the effective foundation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves on 16 December 1815, a juridical institution rapidly recognized by other nations.

With the King absent and the country devastated by the Peninsular War and the consequent mass hunger and enormous exodus of emigrants,[54] Portugal became a de facto British protectorate upon the final expulsion of the French.

The revolt started on the pretext of crushing the Freemasons and defending the King from threats of death that the Masons has supposedly made against him, but John was taken into custody at the Bemposta Palace, while several of Miguel's political enemies were also imprisoned elsewhere.

Nonetheless, Oliveira Lima affirms that rather than being an expression of personal piety, this merely reflected Portuguese culture at that time, and that the King "...understood that the Church, with its body of traditions and its moral discipline, could only be useful for a good government in his manner, paternal and exclusive, of populations whose dominion was inherited with the scepter.

[68] In the course of his few years living in Brazil, John ordered the creation of a series of institutions, projects and services that brought the country immense economic, administrative, juridical, scientific, cultural, artistic and other benefits, although not all went successfully, and some were downright dysfunctional or unnecessary, as Hipólito José da Costa mordantly observed.

[71] He also established various educational programs in Rio, Pernambuco, Bahia and other places, teaching such subjects as dogmatic and moral theology, integral calculus, mechanics, hydrodynamics, chemistry, arithmetic, geometry, French, English, botany and agriculture, among others.

"[81] the King is popularly shown as indolent, silly and clumsy, subjugated by a shrewish wife, a disgusting glutton who always had baked chicken in his coat pockets to eat them at any time with greasy hands,[43][82] a version typified by the Brazilian film Carlota Joaquina – Princesa do Brasil (1995),[43] a parody mixed with sharp social criticism.

That work had enormous repercussions, but, according to the critical commentary of Ronaldo Vainfas, "it is a story full of errors of all types, misrepresentations, imprecisions, inventions";[83] for historian Luiz Carlos Villalta, "it constitutes a broad attack on historical knowledge",[84] in contrast to director Carla Camurati's stated intent "to produce a cinematic narrative that would constitute a type of historical novel with pedagogic function and, at the same time, would offer the viewer knowledge of the past and would help, as a people, to think about the present.

[86] As for historians' portrayals, researcher Ismênia de Lima Martins writes, "If there is agreement among all authors who relied on the testimony of those who knew him closely for his kindness and affability, all the rest is controversy.

In any event, Dom João VI left his indelible mark on Portuguese-Brazilian history, a fact that resonates to the present, through a historiography that insists on judging the King, despite the transformations that discipline experienced over the course of the twentieth century".

[92] Diplomatic documents also confirm the breadth of his political vision, aiming to give Brazil an importance in the Americas comparable to the United States, adopting a discourse similar the U.S. doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

He asserted his authority without violence, more in a persuasive and affable manner; his conduct of international affairs, although sometimes unsuccessful and somewhat given to imperialist ambitions, in many other ways was far-seeing and harmonious, as indicated by the many actions described above that improved the living conditions of the Brazilian colony.

He is dominated by the fathers [that is, priests] and can act only under the duress of fear", and several Brazilian historians such as João Pandiá Calógeras, Tobias Monteiro and Luiz Norton draw him in comparably dark colors.

Among the Portuguese, such as Oliveira Martins and Raul Brandão, he was invariably portrayed as a burlesque figure until the conservative resurgence of 1926, when he began to find defenders, such as Fortunato de Almeida, Alfredo Pimenta and Valentim Alexandre.

[82][94][95] It is also certain that many were disaffected with him, that he raised taxes and aggravated the debt, multiplied titles and hereditary privilege, that he could not allay the vast array of internal dissensions or eliminate entrenched administrative corruption, and that he left Brazil on the brink of bankruptcy when he emptied the treasury to return to Portugal.

Gilberto Freyre affirms that "Dom John VI was one of the personalities who had the greatest influence over the formation of the nation.... he was an ideal mediator.... between tradition – which he incarnated – and innovation – which he welcomed and promoted – during that decisive period for the Brazilian future".

[97] As Laurentino Gomes puts it, "no other period of Brazilian history testifies to such profound decisive and rapid changes as the thirteen years in which the Portuguese court lived in Rio de Janeiro".

Scholars such as Oliveira Lima, Maria Odila da Silva Dias, Roderick Barman and the aforementioned Laurentino believe that had John not come to the Americas and installed a strong central government, the large territory of Brazil, with important regional differences, would probably have fragmented into several distinct nations, as occurred with the vast neighboring Spanish colony.