Francisco Ignácio de Carvalho Moreira

Francisco Ignácio de Carvalho Moreira, Baron of Penedo, moved from law and parliamentary politics into diplomacy. Born in Alagoas in 1815, he graduated from the São Paulo law faculty in 1839, helped found the Instituto dos Advogados Brasileiros, and served as its president in 1851–1852. He also represented Alagoas in the Chamber of Deputies before becoming Brazil's minister to the United States. ^{1, 2, 3}

His Washington assignment included Brazil’s resistance to foreign pressure over Amazon navigation. In 1852 foreign minister Paulino Soares de Souza sent him a dispatch warning that American territorial expansion required caution. Historian Paulo Roberto Palm places those instructions within a policy of reassuring Washington that Brazil would eventually open the river while trying to restrain unauthorized foreign ventures. ⁶

Moreira's much longer London career involved commercial and political negotiations. In February 1858 he and the Ottoman ambassador Constantine Musurus signed a treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation between Brazil and the Ottoman Empire. During the Christie dispute in 1863 he represented Brazil in the confrontation that ended in a break with Britain. His London work also included arrangements for Brazil's participation in the international exhibition of 1862. ^{1, 5}

Later missions took him to the Holy See during the 1870s religious controversy and to Paris before the monarchy’s fall. He died in 1906. ^{4, 1}