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Brazil - The Colonial Period
The Colonial Period
Portugal's exploitation of Brazil stemmed from the European commercial
expansion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (see The Colonial
Era, 1500-1815, ch. 1). Blocked from the lucrative hinterland trade
with the Far East, which was dominated by Italian cities, Portugal
began in the early fifteenth century to search for other routes
to the sources of goods valued in European markets. Portugal discovered
the maritime passage to the East Indies around the southern tip
of Africa and established a network of trade outposts throughout
Africa and Asia. After the discovery of America, it competed with
Spain in occupying the New World (see the Indigenous Population,
ch. 1).
Initially, the Portuguese did not find mineral riches in their
American colony, but they never lost the hope of someday finding
such riches there. Meanwhile, in order to settle and defend the
colony from European intruders, the Portuguese established a pioneer
colonial enterprise: the production of sugar in the Northeast. Beginning
in about 1531, cattle began arriving in Brazil, and a cattle industry
developed rapidly in response to the needs of the sugar industry
for transportation and food for workers. The discovery of precious
metals in the colony's Center-South (Centro-Sul), a relatively undefined
region encompassing the present-day Southeast (Sudeste) and South
(Sul) regions, came only in the eighteenth century.
Data as of April 1997
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