History of Brazil
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the lands that now constitute Brazil were occupied, fought over, and settled by diverse tribes for thousands of years. The Portuguese landed in the so-called "New World" on April 22, 1500, commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, an explorer on his way to India under the sponsorship of the Kingdom of Portugal and the support of the Catholic Church.
Between the 16th to the early 19th century, Brazil was created and expanded as a colony, kingdom, and an integral part of the Portuguese Empire. Brazil was briefly named "Land of the Holy Cross" by Portuguese explorers and crusaders before being named "Land of Brazil" by the Brazilian-Portuguese settlers and merchants dealing with brazilwood. The country expanded south along the coast and west along the Amazon River and other inland rivers from the original 15 hereditary captaincy colonies established on the northeast Atlantic coast east of the Tordesillas Line, an imaginary line in the form of a treaty signed in 1494 that divided the Portuguese domain to the east from the Spanish domain to the west. The country's borders were only finalized in the early 20th century, with most of the expansion occurring before the independence, resulting in the largest contiguous territory in the Americas.
On September 7, 1822, prince regent Pedro declared Brazil's independence from Portugal and so the Kingdom of Brazil became the Empire of Brazil, in which he became its first emperor. In 1889, a military coup toppled the monarchy and the First Brazilian Republic was established, albeit with the first five years of the republic as a military dictatorship. Growing political instability within the republic brought its downfall in 1930, when a military coup headed by Getúlio Vargas overthrew the republic. From 1930 to 1945, Brazil was ruled by Vargas in an authoritarian dictatorship. Brazil participated in World War II on the side of the allies' during his rule. In 1945, Vargas' was deposed, and from 1945 to 1964, democracy was briefly restored in the Fourth Brazilian Republic. In 1964, with support from the United States, another military dictatorship was established through a military coup, and ruled until 1985, after which civilian governance and democracy was restored.
Pre-Cabraline history
Some of the earliest human remains found in the Americas, Luzia Woman, were found in the area of Pedro Leopoldo, Minas Gerais and provide evidence of human habitation going back at least 11,000 years.When Portuguese explorers arrived in Brazil, the region was inhabited by hundreds of different native tribes, "the earliest going back at least 10,000 years in the highlands of Minas Gerais". The dating of the origins of the first inhabitants, who were called "Indians" by the Portuguese, is still a matter of dispute among archaeologists. The earliest pottery ever found in the Western Hemisphere, radiocarbon-dated 8,000 years old, has been excavated in the Amazon basin of Brazil, near Santarém, providing evidence to overturn the assumption that the tropical forest region was too poor in resources to have supported a complex prehistoric culture. The current most widely accepted view of anthropologists, linguists and geneticists is that the early tribes were part of the first wave of migrant hunters who came into the Americas from Asia, either by land, across the Bering Strait, or by coastal sea routes along the Pacific, or both.
The Andes and the mountain ranges of northern South America created a rather sharp cultural boundary between the settled agrarian civilizations of the west coast and the semi-nomadic tribes of the east, who never developed written records or permanent monumental architecture. For this reason, very little is known about the history of Brazil before 1500. Archaeological remains indicate a complex pattern of regional cultural developments, internal migrations, and occasional large state-like federations.
At the time of European discovery, the territory of modern-day Brazil had as many as 2,000 tribes. The Indigenous peoples were traditionally mostly semi-nomadic tribes that subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering, and migrant agriculture. When the Portuguese arrived in 1500, the Natives lived mainly on the coast and along the banks of major rivers.
; Marajoara culture |
Tribal warfare, anthropophagy and the pursuit of brazilwood for its treasured red dye convinced the Portuguese that they should Christianize the natives. But the Portuguese, like the Spanish in their South American possessions, had brought diseases with them, against which many Natives were helpless due to lack of immunity. Measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, gonorrhea and influenza killed tens of thousands of indigenous people. The diseases spread quickly along the indigenous trade routes, and whole tribes were probably annihilated without ever coming in direct contact with Europeans.
Marajoara culture
flourished on Marajó island at the mouth of the Amazon River. Archeologists have found sophisticated pottery in their excavations on the island. These pieces are large, and elaborately painted and incised with representations of plants and animals. These provided the first evidence that a complex society had existed in Marajó. Evidence of mound building further suggests that well-populated, complex and sophisticated settlements developed on this island, as only such settlements were believed capable of such extended projects as major earthworks.The extent, level of complexity, and resource interactions of the Marajoara culture have been disputed. American archaeologist Betty Meggers, suggested in the 1950s that the society migrated from the Andes and settled on the island. Many researchers believed that the Andes were populated by Paleoindian migrants from North America who gradually moved south after being hunters on the plains.
In the 1980s, another American archaeologist, Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, led excavations and geophysical surveys of the mound Teso dos Bichos. She concluded that the society that constructed the mounds originated on the island itself.
The pre-Cabraline culture of Marajó may have developed social stratification and supported a population as large as 100,000 people. The Native Americans of the Amazon rainforest may have used their method of developing and working in Terra preta to make the land suitable for the large-scale agriculture needed to support large populations and complex social formations such as chiefdoms.
Early Brazil
In 1493 the papal bull inter caetera divided claims to the New World territories between Spain and Portugal and was revised in 1494 by the Treaty of Tordesillas which moved the dividing line further west.In late 1499 part of the expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda, in which Amerigo Vespucci took part, sighted Brazil. Shortly after the expedition led by Spanish navigator and explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, a Spanish navigator who had accompanied Columbus in his first voyage of discovery to the Americas, reached the, a promontory located in the current state of Pernambuco, on 26 January 1500. This is the oldest confirmed European landing in Brazilian territory. Pinzón was unable to claim the land because of the Treaty of Tordesillas. In April 1500, Brazil was claimed for Portugal on the arrival of the Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral. The Portuguese encountered stone-using natives divided into several tribes, many of whom shared the same Tupi–Guarani language family, and fought among themselves. Early names for the country included Santa Cruz and Terra dos Papagaios. After European arrival, the land's major export was a type of tree traders and colonists called pau-Brasil or brazilwood from which came its final name. It is a large tree whose trunk yields a prized red dye, and was nearly wiped out due to overexploitation.
Until 1529 Portugal had little interest in settling Brazil as it was focused on its already profitable commerce with India, China, and the East Indies. This lack of interest allowed traders, pirates, and privateers of several countries to poach profitable Brazilwood in lands claimed by Portugal, with France setting up the short-lived colony of France Antarctique in 1555. In response, the Portuguese Crown devised a system to effectively settle Brazil. Through the hereditary Captaincies system, they divided Brazil into strips of land and donated them to Portuguese noblemen, who were in turn responsible for occupying and administering the lands while answering to the King. The system was later substituted for a dual state government in 1572, where the country was divided into the Northern Government based in Salvador and the Southern Government based in Rio de Janeiro.
The Portuguese settlers introduced and propagated old-world cultures such as rice, coffee, sugar, cows, chicken, pigs, bread, wine, oranges, horses, stonemasonry, metalworking and guitars. There was also a mixing of peoples through intermarriage. Since colonial times Portuguese settlers intermarried with Indigenous and African populations. The most common marriages occurred between white, Indigenous, and African populations. In the present, the largest ethnic groups include: those of mainly European descent, people of mixed ethnic backgrounds or mulattos, people entirely of African ancestry, those with Asian ancestry and indigenous.
Iberian Union
In 1578, the young King Sebastian, King of Portugal disappeared in a crusade in Morocco, during the Battle of Alcácer Quibir. The king had entered the war without much allied support or the necessary resources to fight properly. Since he had no direct heirs, Philip II of Spain, who was his uncle, was the only successor and took control of the Portuguese administration in 1580. The 60-year period of his rule is called the Iberian Union, in reference to the Iberian peninsula on which Spain and Portugal are located. It ended in 1640 when John IV of Portugal, Duke of Braganza, restored Portuguese independence and formed the 3rd Portuguese Royal Dynasty, the House of Braganza.With the merging of the crowns in the Iberian Union, Portuguese/Brazilian settlers were legally allowed to cross beyond the Treaty of Tordesillas line, and thus more interior expansions of Brazil began or were at least officialized and mapped during that period. Sebastian never returned which originated the messianic line of thought Sebastianism, which asserted that the rightful King would return from the mists and restore the Kingdom to its former glory. In Brazil the most important manifestation of Sebastianism was the Proclamation of the Republic, when movements defending a return to the monarchy emerged.
It is one the longest-lived millenarian legends in Western Europe, and had profound political and cultural resonances from the time of Sebastian's death until at least the late 19th century in Brazil.