32 Facts About Colonial Brazil

In contrast to the neighboring Spanish possessions, which had several viceroyalties with jurisdiction initially over New Spain and Peru, and in the eighteenth century expanded to viceroyalties of the Rio de la Plata and New Granada, the Portuguese colony of Colonial Brazil was settled mainly in the coastal area by the Portuguese and a large black slave population working sugar plantations and mines.

Unlike Spanish America, which fragmented into many republics upon independence, Colonial Brazil remained a single administrative unit under a monarch as the Empire of Colonial Brazil, giving rise to the largest country in Latin America.

In 1494, the two kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula divided the New World between them in the Treaty of Tordesillas, and in 1500 navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral landed in what is Colonial Brazil and laid claim to it in the name of King Manuel I of Portugal.

Portuguese "discovery" of Colonial Brazil was preceded by a series of treaties between the kings of Portugal and Castile, following Portuguese sailings down the coast of Africa to India and the voyages to the Caribbean of the Genoese mariner sailing for Castile, Christopher Columbus.

Just a few months before Cabral landed, Vicente Yanez Pinzon came to the northeastern coast of Colonial Brazil and deployed many armed men ashore with no means of communicating with the indigenous people.

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Cabral left two degredados in Colonial Brazil to learn the native languages and to serve as interpreters in the future.

Colonial Brazil was not home to complex civilizations like the Aztec and the Inca in Mexico and Peru, the Portuguese could not place themselves on an established social structure.

The social model of conquest in Colonial Brazil was one geared toward commerce and entrepreneurial ideals rather than conquest as was the case in the Spanish realm.

Colonial Brazil brought along Jesuit priests, who set up missions, saved many natives from slavery, studied native languages, and converted many natives to Roman Catholicism.

Colonial Brazil's captaincy prospered with, engenhos, sugarcane mills, installed after 1542 producing sugar.

Tome de Sousa, the first Governor-General of Colonial Brazil, brought detailed instructions, prepared by the king's aides, about how to administer and foster the development of the colony.

Colonial Brazil's first act was the foundation of the capital city, Salvador, in northeastern Brazil, in today's state of Bahia.

Colonial Brazil was an efficient administrator who managed to defeat the indigenous people and, with the help of the Jesuits, expel the French from their colony of France Antarctique.

Huge size of Colonial Brazil led to the colony being divided in two after 1621 when king Philip II created the states of Brasil, with Salvador as capital, and Maranhao, with its capital in Sao Luis.

Potential riches of tropical Colonial Brazil led the French, who did not recognize the Tordesillas Treaty that divided the world between the Spanish and the Portuguese, to attempt to colonize parts of Colonial Brazil.

Portuguese attempted to severely restrict colonial trade, meaning that Brazil was only allowed to export and import goods from Portugal and other Portuguese colonies.

Colonial Brazil exported sugar, tobacco, cotton and native products and imported from Portugal wine, olive oil, textiles and luxury goods – the latter imported by Portugal from other European countries.

Unlike neighboring Spanish America, Colonial Brazil was a slave society from its outset.

The slave trade in Colonial Brazil would continue for nearly two hundred years and last the longest of any country in the Americas.

Colonial Brazil was constructed as an export colony, and less so as a place for permanent European settlement.

Expeditions to inland Colonial Brazil are divided into two types: the entradas and the bandeiras.

In 1763, the capital of colonial Brazil was transferred from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro, which was located closer to the mining region and provided a harbor to ship the gold to Europe.

Colonial Brazil later became a symbol of the struggle for Brazilian independence and liberty from Portuguese rule.

Unlike in many areas of Central and South America, in Colonial Brazil Amerindians did not significantly disrupt and damage biotic communities.

Indigenous flora in the interior of Colonial Brazil withered and died in the face of repeated trampling by cattle; the flora were replaced by grasses able to adapt to such abuse.

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Colonial Brazil attempted to stop slash-and-burn agriculture through the imposition of a village social order.

Colonial Brazil entities, ordered by the date of establishment, earlier to later:.

From 1534 until 1549, Colonial Brazil was divided by the Portuguese Crown in private and autonomous colonies known as hereditary captaincies, or captaincy colonies .

Between 1572 and 1578 and again between 1607 and 1613, the colony was split in two, and during those periods the Governorate General of Colonial Brazil did not exist, being replaced by two separate Governorates: the Governorate General of Bahia, in the North, with its seat in the city of Salvador, and the Governorate General of Rio de Janeiro, in the South, with its seat in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

In 1621, an administrative reorganization took place, and the Governorate General of Colonial Brazil became known as the State of Colonial Brazil, keeping Salvador as its capital city.

The State of Colonial Brazil was thus expanded; it became the sole Portuguese State in South America; and it now included in its territory the whole of the Portuguese possessions in the American Continent.

The office of Viceroy of Colonial Brazil ceased to exist upon the arrival of the Royal Family in Rio de Janeiro, since the Prince Regent, the future King John VI, assumed personal control of the government of the colony, that became the provisional seat of the whole Portuguese Empire.