Colonial Brazil Brasil Colonial | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1500–1815 | |||||||||
    | |||||||||
| Status | Colony of the Kingdom of Portugal | ||||||||
| Capital | Salvador (1549–1763) Rio de Janeiro (1763–1815) | ||||||||
| Common languages | Portuguese (official) Paulista General Language, Nheengatu,[citation needed] many indigenous languages | ||||||||
| Religion | Catholic (official) Afro-Brazilian religions, Judaism, indigenous practices | ||||||||
| Government | Absolute monarchy | ||||||||
| Monarch | |||||||||
• 1500–1521 | Manuel I (first) | ||||||||
• 1777–1815 | Maria I (last) | ||||||||
| Governor | |||||||||
• 1549–1553 | Tomé de Sousa (first, as governor-general) | ||||||||
• 1806–1808 | Marcos de Noronha (last, as viceroy) | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
| 22 April 1500 | |||||||||
| 13 December 1815 | |||||||||
| Area | |||||||||
• Total | 8,100,200[1] km2 (3,127,500 sq mi) | ||||||||
| Currency | Portuguese real | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of | Brazil Uruguay | ||||||||
Colonial Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil Colonial) 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;[2] 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 with jurisdiction initially over New Spain (Mexico) and Peru, and in the eighteenth century expanded with the viceroyalties of the Río de la Plata (Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia) and New Granada (Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador and Guyana), 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.
- ^ "Society and Education in Brazil" "Authors: Robert J. Havighurst, J. Roberto Moreira" "https://books.google.pt/books?id=u65BLiP8qXEC&pg=PA60
- ^ A.J.R. Russell-Wood, Brazil, The colonial era" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 1, p. 410. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996.