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Who colonized Brazil?

South America — the powers that ruled Brazil, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Brazil?

Portugal, from 1500 to independence in 1822. Brazil received more enslaved Africans than any other territory in the Americas — around 4.9 million — and was the last country in the hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888.

Brazil was the largest single destination of the transatlantic slave trade. Roughly two in five people carried across the Atlantic were landed in Brazilian ports.

Reference

Who ruled Brazil, and when

before 1500
Tupi, Guarani and hundreds of other nations
1500–1822
Portugal
1822–1889
Empire of Brazil

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Portugal, Netherlands (1630–54, northeast)
Independence
7 September 1822
Enslaved Africans landed
About 4.9 million, roughly 40% of the entire Atlantic trade
Abolition
1888, later than any other American state
Indigenous loss
Population collapse of over 90% in the first two centuries

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1500

    Cabral lands; Portuguese claim asserted.

  2. 1530s

    Sugar plantations and the captaincy system.

  3. 1690s

    Gold rush in Minas Gerais.

  4. 1822

    Independence declared by Dom Pedro.

  5. 1888

    Lei Áurea abolishes slavery — the last in the Americas.

Context

What the record shows

Abolition in 1888 came without land, compensation or citizenship provision for the freed, and the resulting inequality remains legible in Brazilian wealth data today.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Brazil?
Portugal, from 1500 until independence in 1822. The Dutch held part of the northeast between 1630 and 1654.
How many enslaved people were taken to Brazil?
About 4.9 million disembarked in Brazil — the largest number of any territory in the Americas.
When did Brazil become independent?
7 September 1822.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Brazil

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.