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Colonial Brazil
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Colonial Brazil
Colonial Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil Colonial), sometimes referred to as Portuguese America, comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal. During the 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the main economic activities of the territory were based first on brazilwood extraction (brazilwood cycle), which gave the territory its name; sugar production (sugar cycle); and finally on gold and diamond mining (gold cycle). Slaves, especially those brought from Africa, provided most of the workforce of the Brazilian export economy after a brief initial period of Indigenous slavery to cut brazilwood.
In contrast to the neighboring Spanish possessions, which had several viceroyalties, the colony of Brazil was settled mainly in the coastal area by the Portuguese and a large black slave population working on sugar plantations and mines.
The boom and bust of the economic cycles were linked to export products. Brazil's sugar age, with the development of plantation slavery, merchants serving as middle men between production sites, Brazilian ports, and Europe was undermined by the growth of the sugar industry in the Caribbean on islands that European powers seized from Spain. Gold and diamonds were discovered and mined in southern Brazil through the end of the colonial era. Brazilian cities were largely port cities and the colonial administrative capital was moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro in response to the rise and fall of export products' importance.
Unlike Spanish America, which fragmented into many republics upon independence, Brazil remained a single administrative unit under a monarch as the Empire of Brazil, giving rise to the largest country in Latin America. Just as Spanish and Roman Catholicism were a core source of cohesion among Spain's vast and multi-ethnic territories, Brazilian society was united by the Portuguese language and Roman Catholicism. As the only Lusophone polity in the Americas, the Portuguese language was - and remains - particularly important to Brazilian identity.
Portugal pioneered the European charting of sea routes that were the first and only channels of interaction between all of the world's continents, thus beginning the process of globalization. In addition to the imperial and economic undertaking of discovery and colonization of lands distant from Europe, these years were filled with pronounced advancements in cartography, shipbuilding and navigational instruments, of which the Portuguese explorers took advantage.
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 Álvares Cabral landed in what is now Brazil and laid claim to it in the name of king Manuel I of Portugal. The Portuguese identified in Portuguese brazilwood as a valuable red dye source and an exploitable product, and attempted to force indigenous groups in Brazil to cut the trees.
Portuguese seafarers in the early fifteenth century, as an extension of the Portuguese Reconquista, began to expand from a small area of the Iberian Peninsula, to seizing the Muslim fortress of Ceuta in North Africa. Its maritime exploration then proceeded down the coast of West Africa and across the Indian Ocean to the south Asian subcontinent, as well as the Atlantic islands off the coast of Africa on the way. They sought sources of gold, ivory, and African slaves, high value goods in the African trade. The Portuguese set up fortified trading feitorias (factories), whereby permanent, fairly small commercial settlements anchored trade in a region.
The initial costs of setting up these commercial posts was borne by private investors, who in turn received hereditary titles and commercial advantages. From the Portuguese Crown's point of view, its realm was expanded with relatively little cost to itself. On the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira, and São Tomé, the Portuguese began plantation production of sugarcane using forced labor, a precedent for Brazil's sugar production in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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Colonial Brazil
Colonial Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil Colonial), sometimes referred to as Portuguese America, comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal. During the 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the main economic activities of the territory were based first on brazilwood extraction (brazilwood cycle), which gave the territory its name; sugar production (sugar cycle); and finally on gold and diamond mining (gold cycle). Slaves, especially those brought from Africa, provided most of the workforce of the Brazilian export economy after a brief initial period of Indigenous slavery to cut brazilwood.
In contrast to the neighboring Spanish possessions, which had several viceroyalties, the colony of Brazil was settled mainly in the coastal area by the Portuguese and a large black slave population working on sugar plantations and mines.
The boom and bust of the economic cycles were linked to export products. Brazil's sugar age, with the development of plantation slavery, merchants serving as middle men between production sites, Brazilian ports, and Europe was undermined by the growth of the sugar industry in the Caribbean on islands that European powers seized from Spain. Gold and diamonds were discovered and mined in southern Brazil through the end of the colonial era. Brazilian cities were largely port cities and the colonial administrative capital was moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro in response to the rise and fall of export products' importance.
Unlike Spanish America, which fragmented into many republics upon independence, Brazil remained a single administrative unit under a monarch as the Empire of Brazil, giving rise to the largest country in Latin America. Just as Spanish and Roman Catholicism were a core source of cohesion among Spain's vast and multi-ethnic territories, Brazilian society was united by the Portuguese language and Roman Catholicism. As the only Lusophone polity in the Americas, the Portuguese language was - and remains - particularly important to Brazilian identity.
Portugal pioneered the European charting of sea routes that were the first and only channels of interaction between all of the world's continents, thus beginning the process of globalization. In addition to the imperial and economic undertaking of discovery and colonization of lands distant from Europe, these years were filled with pronounced advancements in cartography, shipbuilding and navigational instruments, of which the Portuguese explorers took advantage.
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 Álvares Cabral landed in what is now Brazil and laid claim to it in the name of king Manuel I of Portugal. The Portuguese identified in Portuguese brazilwood as a valuable red dye source and an exploitable product, and attempted to force indigenous groups in Brazil to cut the trees.
Portuguese seafarers in the early fifteenth century, as an extension of the Portuguese Reconquista, began to expand from a small area of the Iberian Peninsula, to seizing the Muslim fortress of Ceuta in North Africa. Its maritime exploration then proceeded down the coast of West Africa and across the Indian Ocean to the south Asian subcontinent, as well as the Atlantic islands off the coast of Africa on the way. They sought sources of gold, ivory, and African slaves, high value goods in the African trade. The Portuguese set up fortified trading feitorias (factories), whereby permanent, fairly small commercial settlements anchored trade in a region.
The initial costs of setting up these commercial posts was borne by private investors, who in turn received hereditary titles and commercial advantages. From the Portuguese Crown's point of view, its realm was expanded with relatively little cost to itself. On the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira, and São Tomé, the Portuguese began plantation production of sugarcane using forced labor, a precedent for Brazil's sugar production in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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