The aim of this text is to carry out an exploratory reflection exercise based on a working hypothesis: the importance of relating the events that took place in the Portuguese Empire between 1808 and 1822, when the capital moved from the city of Lisbon to the city of Rio de Janeiro, by analysing the imperial circuits of government and political communication. Faced with the contingencies brought about by the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, Rio de Janeiro is seen as the new center of the administrative pilgrimage route which, on the one hand, met the governmental needs of the Portuguese monarchy and, on the other, generated a great deal of disaffection on the part of the Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian elites, who would turn these grievances into political demands.