Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is also the world's fifth-largest country by area and the seventh-largest by population, with over 214 million people. Brazil is a federation composed of 26 states and a Federal District, which hosts the capital, Brasília. Its most populous city is São Paulo, followed by Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has the largest Lusophone population in the world and is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas, where it is the official language.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of , among the longest in the world. Covering roughly half of South America's land area, it borders all other countries and territories on the continent except Ecuador and Chile. Brazil encompasses a wide range of tropical and subtropical landscapes, as well as wetlands, savannas, plateaus, and low mountains. It contains most of the Amazon basin, including the world's largest river system and most extensive virgin tropical forest. Brazil has diverse wildlife, a variety of ecological systems, and extensive natural resources spanning numerous protected habitats. It ranks first among 17 megadiverse countries, with its natural heritage being the subject of significant global interest, as environmental degradation (through processes such as deforestation) directly affect global issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
Brazil was inhabited by various indigenous peoples prior to the landing of Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500. The territory was subsequently claimed and settled by Portugal, which founded the country's first city, São Vicente, in 1532 and imported enslaved Africans to work on plantations. Brazil remained a colony until 1815, when it was elevated to a united kingdom with Portugal after the transfer of the Portuguese court to Rio de Janeiro. Prince Pedro of Braganza declared Brazilian independence in 1822 and, after waging a war against Portugal, established the Empire of Brazil. The country's first constitution in 1824 established a bicameral legislature and enshrined principles such as freedom of religion and the press; slavery was gradually abolished until its final abolition in 1888. Brazil became a presidential republic following a military coup d'état in 1889. An armed revolution in 1930 ended the First Republic and brought Getúlio Vargas to power. Vargas' self-coup in 1937 ushered the authoritarian Estado Novo, in which he oversaw Brazil's involvement in World War II. Democracy was restored after Vargas' ousting in 1945. An authoritarian military dictatorship emerged in 1964 with support from the United States and ruled until 1985, after which civilian governance resumed. Brazil's current constitution, enacted in 1988, defines it as a democratic federal republic.
Brazil is a regional and middle power, and has been described as a rising global power. It is an emerging, upper-middle income economy and newly industrialized country; Brazil has one of the 10 largest economies in the world in both nominal and PPP terms, the largest economy in Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere, and the largest share of wealth in South America. With a complex and highly diversified economy, Brazil is one of the world's major or primary exporters of various agricultural goods, mineral resources, and manufactured products. The country ranks thirteenth in the world by number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Brazil is a founding member of the United Nations, the G20, BRICS, G4, Mercosur, Organization of American States, Organization of Ibero-American States, and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries; it is also an observer state of the Arab League and a major non-NATO ally of the United States.
Etymology
The word Brazil probably comes from the Portuguese word for brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast. In Portuguese, brazilwood is called , with the word commonly given the etymology 'red like an ember', formed from ('ember') and the suffix (from or ). It has alternatively been suggested that this is a folk etymology for a word for the plant related to an Arabic or Asian word for a red plant. As brazilwood produces a deep red dye, it was highly valued by the European textile industry and was the earliest commercially exploited product from Brazil. Throughout the 16th century, massive amounts of brazilwood were harvested by indigenous peoples (mostly Tupi) along the Brazilian coast, who sold the timber to European traders in return for assorted European consumer goods.
The official Portuguese name of the land, in original Portuguese records, was the 'Land of the Holy Cross' (), but European sailors and merchants commonly called it the 'Land of Brazil' () because of the brazilwood trade. Popular usage eclipsed and eventually supplanted the official Portuguese name. Some early sailors called it the 'Land of Parrots'. In the Guarani language, Brazil is called , meaning 'land of the palm trees'.
History
Pre-Cabraline era
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. The earliest pottery ever found in the Western Hemisphere was excavated in the Amazon basin of Brazil and radiocarbon dated to over 8,000 years ago (6000 BC). The pottery was found near Santarém and provides evidence that the region supported a complex prehistoric culture. The Marajoara culture flourished on Marajó in the Amazon delta from AD 400 to 1400, developing sophisticated pottery, social stratification, large populations, mound building, and complex social formations such as chiefdoms.
Around the time of the Portuguese arrival, the territory of present day Brazil had an estimated Indigenous population of 7 million people, mostly semi-nomadic, who subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering, and migrant agriculture. The population comprised several large Indigenous ethnic groups (e.g., the Tupis, Guaranis, and Gês. The Tupi people were subdivided into the Tupiniquins and Tupinambás.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, the boundaries between these groups and their subgroups were marked by wars that arose from differences in culture, language and moral beliefs. These wars also involved large-scale military actions on land and water, with cannibalistic rituals on prisoners of war.Gomes, Mercio P. The Indians and Brazil University Press of Florida 2000 pp. 28–29 While heredity had some weight, leadership was a status more won over time than assigned in succession ceremonies and conventions. Slavery among the Indigenous groups had a different meaning than it had for Europeans, since it originated from a diverse socioeconomic organization, in which asymmetries were translated into kinship relations.
European colonization and Colonial Brazil
Following the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, the land now called Brazil was claimed for the Portuguese Empire on 22 April 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese fleet commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral.Boxer, p. 98. Along the coast, the Portuguese encountered various Indigenous communities, most of whom spoke languages of the Tupi–Guarani family.Boxer, p. 100. Though the first settlement, São Vicente, was founded in 1532, colonization effectively began in 1534, when King John III of Portugal divided the territory into the fifteen private and autonomous captaincies.Boxer, pp. 100–101.Skidmore, p. 27.
However, the decentralized and unorganized captaincy system proved unsuccessful, and in 1549 the Portuguese king restructured them into the Governorate General of Brazil in the city of Salvador, which became the capital of a single and centralized Portuguese colony in South America.Boxer, p. 101. In the first two centuries of colonization, Indigenous and European groups lived in constant war, establishing opportunistic alliances in order to gain advantages against each other.Meuwese, Mark "Brothers in Arms, Partners in Trade: Dutch-Indigenous Alliances in the Atlantic World, 1595–1674" Koninklijke Brill NV 2012 Chapter IIIMetcalf, Alida C. "Go-betweens And the Colonization of Brazil: 1500–1600" University of Texas Press 2005, pp. 70, 79, 202 View on Google Books Minahan, James B. "Ethnic Groups of the Americas" ABC-CLIO 2013 p. 300, View on Google Books
By the mid-16th century, cane sugar had become Brazil's most important export,Skidmore, p. 36. while slaves purchased in Sub-Saharan Africa in the slave market of Western AfricaRichard Middleton and Anne Lombard "Colonial America: A History to 1763" Wiley-Blackwell Publishing 1st edition 1992 Chapter 2, Section 4 (final, last page and half of previous one) View on Google Books (not only those from Portuguese allies of their colonies in Angola and Mozambique), had become its largest import,Boxer, p. 110Skidmore, p. 34. to cope with sugarcane plantations, due to increasing international demand for Brazilian sugar.Boxer, p. 102.Skidmore, pp. 32–33. Brazil received more than 2.8 million slaves from Africa between the years 1500 and 1800.
By the end of the 17th century, sugar exports began to declineBoxer, p. 164. and the discovery of gold by bandeirantes in the 1690s would become the new backbone of the colony's economy, fostering a gold rushBoxer, pp. 168, 170. which attracted thousands of new settlers to Brazil from Portugal and all Portuguese colonies around the world.Boxer, p. 169. This increased level of immigration in turn caused some conflicts between newcomers and old settlers.
Portuguese expeditions known as bandeiras gradually expanded Brazil's original colonial frontiers in South America to its approximately current borders.Corrado, Jacopo "The Creole Elite and the Rise of Angolan Protonationalism" Cambria Press 2008 pp. 95 (Brazil) and 145, note 5 View on Google Books In this era, other European powers tried to colonize parts of Brazil, in incursions that the Portuguese had to fight, notably the French in Rio during the 1560s, in Maranhão during the 1610s, and the Dutch in Bahia and Pernambuco, during the Dutch–Portuguese War, after the end of Iberian Union.Bethell, Leslie "Colonial Brazil" Cambridge University Press 1987 pp. 19, 74, 86, 169–70
The Portuguese colonial administration in Brazil had two objectives that would ensure colonial order and the monopoly of Portugal's wealthiest and largest colony: to keep under control and eradicate all forms of slave rebellion and resistance, such as the Quilombo of Palmares,Schwartz, Stuart B. "Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels" Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 1992 Chapter 4 View on Google Books and to repress all movements for autonomy or independence, such as the (1789).MacLachlan, Colin M. "A History of Modern Brazil: The Past Against the Future"; Scholarly Resources Inc. 2003 p. 3 View on Google Books
Kingdom of Brazil
In late 1807, Spanish and Napoleonic forces threatened the security of continental Portugal, causing Prince Regent John, in the name of Queen Maria I, to move the royal court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro.Boxer, p. 213 There they established some of Brazil's first financial institutions, such as its local stock exchangesMarta Barcellos & Simone Azevedo; Histórias do Mercado de Capitais no Brasil ("Financial Markets' Histories in Brazil") (Portuguese) Campus Elsevier 2011 Introduction (by Ney Carvalho), Intro. p. xiv and its National Bank, additionally ending the Portuguese monopoly on Brazilian trade and opening Brazil's ports to other nations. In 1809, in retaliation for being forced into exile, the Prince Regent ordered the conquest of French Guiana.Bueno, p. 145.