Brazilian society is made up of a confluence of people of Indigenous, Portuguese, and African descent. Other major significant groups include Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Lebanese, Eastern Europeans, and Japanese.
Latin Europe accounted for four-fifths of the arrivals (2.25 million Portuguese, 1.5 million Italians, and 700,000 Spaniards).
Brazil has seen greater racial equality over time. According to a recent review study, "There has been major, albeit uneven, progress in these terms since slavery, which has unfortunately not wholly translated into equality of income: only in 2011 did the black-to-white income ratio eclipse its 1960 level, although it appears to be at an all-time high. Education and migration were important factors in closing the gap, whereas school quality and discrimination may explain its persistence."
Historical background
The Brazilian population was formed by the influx of Portuguese settlers and African slaves, mostly Bantu and West African populationsGilberto Freyre. Masters and Slaves (translation of Casa Grande e Senzala). pp. 304–318. (such as the Yoruba, Ewe, and Fanti-Ashanti), into a territory inhabited by various indigenous South American tribal populations, mainly Tupi, Guarani and Ge.Gilberto Freyre Masters and Slaves. (Translation of Casa Grande e Senzala). p. 92: As for domestic animals to be found among either of the two principal groups – the Tupís and the Gê-Botocudos -, etc.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in what is known as Great Immigration,Marília D. Klaumann Cánovas. A GRANDE IMIGRAÇÃO EUROPÉIA PARA O BRASIL E O IMIGRANTE ESPANHOL NO CENÁRIO DA CAFEICULTURA PAULISTA: ASPECTOS DE UMA (IN)VISIBILIDADE new groups arrived, mainly of Japanese, Italian, Lebanese, German, Spanish, and Portuguese origin, but also from Asia, Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe, and Africa.Maria Stella Ferreira Levy. O papel da migração internacional na evolução da população brasileira (1872 to 1972). inRevista de Saúde Pública, volume supl, June 1974.
When the Portuguese reached what is now called Brazil in 1500, its native population was probably composed of about 2.5 million Amerindians.Sérgio Pena et alli. DNA tests probe the genomic ancestry of Brazilians . Introduction, first paragraph.: Little is known about the number of indigenous people living in the area of what is now Brazil when the Portuguese arrived in 1500, although a figure often cited is that of 2.5 million individuals. Up to 1532, the Portuguese made no real effort to colonise the land, limiting to the establishment of feitorias (factories) to organise the trade of brazilwood.
When it became clear that this policy would result in the land being taken by other European powers, namely the French and Dutch, the Portuguese Crown decided to effectively occupy the territory by fostering agricultural activities, especially sugarcane. Maria Stella Ferreira Levy. O papel da migração internacional na evolução da população brasileira (1872 a 1972) p. 50. This resulted in the growth of the population of Portuguese origin, but also in the introduction of the African slave trade in Brazil.
During the colonial period, Portugal restricted the influx of other Europeans to Brazil.Flávia de Ávila, Entrada de Trabalhadores Estrangeiros no Brasil: Evolução Legislativa e Políticas Subjacentes nos Séculos XIX e XX. PhD thesis. Florianópolis: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2003. pp 30. (Available here [1.21MB PDF file].) As a consequence, Portuguese settlers and their descendants constituted the overwhelming majority of the white population in colonial Brazil.Flávia de Ávila, Entrada de Trabalhadores Estrangeiros no Brasil. (Available here [1.21MB PDF file].), p. 31-32: Ser estrangeiro significava, em primazia, qualquer indivíduo que não fosse súdito da Coroa portuguesa, e os poucos que viviam no Brasil o faziam mais por razões aventureiras e individuais que coletivas ou resultantes de providências governamentais para aportarem em terras coloniais.
However, in Southern Brazilian areas disputed between the Portuguese and Spanish crowns, genetic studies suggest a different demographic profile. Research indicates that the predominant genomic ancestry of Brazilian Gaúchos (the inhabitants of the Pampas) may be Spanish rather than Portuguese.História genética dos gaúchos : dinâmica populacional do sul do Brasil. Y-SNP/STR data suggests that Gaúcho males have more genetic similarity with Spaniards than with the Portuguese. The history of Rio Grande do Sul is unique because, during the Colonial Era, political control of the region alternated between the Spanish and Portuguese Empires (Flores 2003). While these historical events align with these findings, researchers note that caution is needed, as clear differentiation between specific Iberian Peninsula populations is often difficult to observe at the Y-chromosome level.
A smaller number of Dutch settlers remained in the Northeast after Portugal retook Dutch BrazilJohannes Menne Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade, 1600–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; ) (here at Google Books). and have contributed to the demographic composition of Northeastern Brazil. Following the country's independence in 1822, immigration to Brazil was still mainly Portuguese, although a significant number of German immigrants had settled in the Southern region.
European, Arab and East Asian immigration Combined with the European demographic crisis, this resulted in the immigration of about 5 million people, mostly European peasants, in the last quarter of the 19th century and first half of the 20th. The majority of these immigrants were either Portuguese or Italian (about 2,250,000 Portuguese, and 1,500,000 Italians), though significant numbers of Spaniards (690,000, possibly including Portuguese emigrating from Vigo on false passportsMirian Halpern Pereira. Algumas observações complementares sobre a política de emigração portuguesa. In Análise Social, vol. xxv (108–109), 1990 (4.° e 5.°) 735–739: É, porém, provável que, para o Brasil pelo menos, a emigração clandestina documentada tenha sido superior à indocumentada. O que não é nada certo é que ela fosse inteiramente registada como imigração portuguesa. A importância dos portugueses que partiam de Vigo com passaporte falso ficou atestada na muito generalizada designação de "galego" dada aos Portugueses no Rio de Janeiro, principal ponto de desembarque dos Portugueses no século xix.), Germans (250,000), Japanese (170,000), Middle Easterns (100,000, mostly people from what are now Syria and Lebanon), and Eastern Europeans (mostly Poles and Ukrainians) also immigrated.
There are few reliable statistics on the Brazilian population before the 1872 census. In it, the Brazilian population is recorded to be made of:
3,787,289 Whites (European mainly)IBGE Teen. Evolução da população/cor 4,188,737 Mixed-race (Pardo) 1,954,452 Blacks (African)
These figures do not yet reflect the influx of the five million immigrants mentioned above, since up to 1872 only about 270,000 immigrants had arrived in Brazil.Maria Stella Ferreira Levy. O Papel da Migração Internacional na Evolução da População Brasileira. Table 2, p. 74. According to Judicael Clevelário's calculations, the total population of immigrant origin in 1872 would be of about 240,000 people;Judicael Clevelário. A participação da imigração na formação da população brasileira . p. 68. consequently, the total White population of non-immigrant origin for that year would be of about 3,540,000 at least.
In the 2010 census, Whites were the largest single group, but not the majority. In 2010, the ethnic backgrounds of Brazilians were:
91,051,646 Whites (European mainly)2010 Brazilian Census 82,277,333 Mixed-race (Pardo) 14,517,961 Blacks (African) 2,084,288 East Asians (Japanese mainly) 817,963 Indigenous (Native)
OriginPeriod 1830–1855 1856–1883 1884–1893 1894–1903 1904–1913 1914–1923 1924–1933 1933–2025 Portuguese 16,737 116,000 170,621 155,542 384,672 201,252 233,650 500,000 Italians — 100,000 510,533 537,784 196,521 86,320 70,177 Spaniards — — 113,116 102,142 224,672 94,779 52,405 Germans 2,008 30,000 22,778 6,698 33,859 29,339 61,723 Japanese — — — — 11,868 20,398 110,191 Levantines — — 96 7,124 45,803 20,400 20,400 Others — — 66,524 42,820 109,222 51,493 164,586
African resistance in the 1800s In the 1880s Brazil remained one of the few nations to still practice the institution of slavery. Brazil accounted for 40% of the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and late 19th centuries. From early on during the trade there has been African resistance to slavery.
Islam of Bahia & Malê revolt Early signs of resistance in Brazil can be found in the 1835 Malê revolt led by African slaves in the city of Salvador de Bahia. It was spearheaded by a group of enslaved African Muslims and freedmen inspired by Muslim teachings that acted against proslavery efforts and demanded that the African people be treated with respect. It is claimed that non-Muslims were also targeted.
The enslaved Africans who resisted were often mutilated, beaten to death, hung or thrown overboard. Those who managed to escape during the 1800s developed maroon communities known as Quilombolas that gave formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants a refuge after escaping slavery. The largest of these communities in Brazil in the 17th century was Quilombolas dos Palomares at 30.000 inhabitants, with more being formed as time passed.
Marronage Marronage refers to the resistance and escape from slavery in Brazil around the mid-1880s. For many African descendants in Brazil, this was a statement that displayed their pride towards the accomplishment of liberation, with the establishment of Quilombolas serving as a decision to as live as free men under their post-colonial society.
When looking at uprisings the focus of African resistance and rebellion to slavery Antônio Bento organized raids with coffee plantations aimed at coffee plantations in Brazil. Production of sugar and coffee were a vital part of Brazil's economy, and this demand required nonstop sunup to sundown labor that due to growth in production Brazilian and Portuguese farmers imposed this task upon the Africans.
Abolition of slavery (1888)
There seems to be no easy explanation of why slaves were not employed as wage workers at the abolition of slavery. One possibility is the influence of race-based ideas from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which were based on theories of White superiority. On the other hand, Brazilian latifundiaries had been using slave manpower for centuries, with no complaints about the quality of this workforce, and there were not important changes in Brazilian economy or work processes that could justify such sudden preoccupation with the "race" of the labourers. Their embracing of those new identitarian ideas, moreover, proved quite flexible, even opportunist: with the slowdown of Italian immigration since 1902 and the Prinetti Decree, Japanese immigration started in 1908, with any qualms about their typically non-European origins being quickly forgotten.
An important, and usually ignored, part of this equation was the political situation in Brazil, during the final crisis of slavery. According to Petrônio Domingues, by 1887 the slave struggles pointed to a real possibility of widespread insurrection. On October 23, in São Paulo, for instance, there were violent confrontations between the police and rioting Blacks, who chanted "long live freedom" and "death to the slaveowners".Petrônio Domingues. Uma história não contada: negro, racismo e branqueamento em São Paulo. The president of the province, Rodrigues Alves, reported the situation as following:
The massive flight of slaves from several fazendas threatens, in some places in the province, public order, alarming the proprietaries and the productive classes.