The monetary unit in the Brazilian Empire was the milréis (1$000 reads “one milréis”). A thousand milréis (1:000$000) came up to one conto. Different punctuation marks were used as thousands’ separators: 3.000:000$000 meant 3 million milréis or three thousand contos. Exchange rates varied greatly across the century, so I have preserved monetary values as they appear in sources.

Throughout the text, nobiliary categories such as duque, marquês, and visconde (duke, marquis, viscount) and government positions (minister, secretary, etc.) are uncapitalized, while proper names following the title preserve conventional capitalization as do cabinet portfolios for easier identification (Foreign Affairs, Empire, Justice, etc.).

For bibliographic references, I have kept original titles with few corrections. Quotes and proper names largely follow modern Brazilian Portuguese orthographic standards. I have used a simplified citation format for legislative debates, Brazilian laws, and government reports, including contemporary state abbreviations to identify provincial presidential reports (PA for Pará, MG for Minas Gerais, MA for Maranhão, etc.). Given that personal names in Portuguese tend to be longer than the norm in English, I adhere to the most common name for each character throughout the text but switch to noble titles after their date of conferral. Pedro de Araújo Lima, for instance, became the marquês de Olinda in 1854; hence, he is referred to as Olinda in chapters dealing with events after that year.