I seek, in this dissertation, to problematize the racialist dimension of pioneering texts referred to the discussion of the idea of patria (homeland) and nation, in the wake of the independent debates that emanated from Rio de Janeiro during the first half of the 19th century. By considering the hypothesis that such a dimension constituted a decisive aspect in the guiding of the attitudes and imaginings of those who pertained to the better sort of society at the time, I analyze the writings of José Bonifácio, Gonçalves de Magalhães, Torres-Homem, Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos, Januário da Cunha Barbosa and K.F.P. von Martius. I discuss the uses and appropriations these authors made of the broad rhetoric of hierarchizing peoples, in accordance with their own expectations concerning the definition of Brazil and of Brazilians. Therefore, I try to demonstrate the ways in which these authors have mobilized, each one in its own way, the vast repertoire of the rhetoric of a self-referent whiteness identified with civilization. In addition, I demonstrate how centuries-old notions of moral and phenotypic inferiority of those others, namely the Negroes and the Indians, along the State-building process and its definition of what nationhood should mean.