Colonial Brazil

Brazil, 1500–1815. Draft, not yet reviewed

Colonial Brazil is the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal. In 1500 the 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 main economic activities were first brazilwood extraction, then sugar production, and finally gold and diamond mining. The colonial administrative capital was moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro.

Seat of power: Salvador

No rulers documented for this era yet.

Culture

• 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 1695, at Rio das Velhas, Manuel Borba Gato discovered gold, the start of the Brazilian Gold Rush.
• Brazilian society was united by the Portuguese language and Roman Catholicism.

Picture

Ouro Preto is a former colonial mining town that was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO due to its Baroque colonial architecture.

Image: Raquel Mendes Silva, CC BY-SA 4.0, file

Sources

• Colonial Brazil (Wikipedia)
• Colonial Brazil (Wikidata)
• About the picture (Wikipedia)

Text adapted from the Wikipedia articles listed as sources, CC BY-SA 4.0.