  |
Brazil's recorded history begins with the arrival of the Portuguese
in 1500, although it had been discovered and settled by Indians many
centuries before. The importation of millions of African slaves over
the next four centuries completed the rich blend of European, Indian
and African influences that formed modern Brazil and its people. Achieving
independence from Portugal in 1822, Brazil's enormous wealth in land
and natural resources underpinned a boom-and-bust cycle of economic
development that continues to the present day. The eternal "Land
of the Future" is still a prisoner of its past, as industrialization
turned Brazil into the economic giant of South America, but sharpened
social divisions. After a twenty-year interlude of military rule, the
civilian "New Republic" has struggled, with some success,
against deep-rooted economic crisis and has managed to consolidate democracy.
Although social divisions remain, the current economic and political
outlook is the best it has been for a generation
Early history
Very little is known about the thousands of years that Brazil was inhabited
exclusively by Indians . The first chroniclers who arrived with the
Portuguese - Pedro Vaz da Caminha in 1500 and Gaspar Carvajal in 1540
- saw large villages, but...
Conquest
The Portuguese discovery of Brazil, when Pedro Alvares Cabral landed
in southern Bahia on April 23, 1500, was an accident, an episode in
Portugal's thrust to found a seaborne empire in the East Indies during
the sixteenth century. Cabral was...
War with the Dutch
The Dutch , with naval bases in the Caribbean and a powerful fleet,
were the best placed to move against Brazil. A mixture of greed and
pressing political motives lay behind the Dutch decision. From 1580
to 1640 Portugal was united with Spain,...
The bandeirantes: Gold and god
The expulsion of the Dutch demonstrated the toughness of the early Brazilians,
which was also well to the fore in the penetration and settling of the
interior during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Every few
months, expeditions set...
The Jesuits
Apart from the bandeirantes, the most important agents of the colonization
of the interior were the Jesuits . The first Jesuit missionaries arrived
in Brazil in 1549 and, thanks to the influence they held over successive
Portuguese...
Independence
Brazil, uniquely among South American countries, achieved a peaceful
transition to independence. The odds seemed against it at one point.
Brazilian resentment at their exclusion from government, and at the
Portuguese monopoly of foreign trade, grew...
Early empire: Revolt in the regions
Although independence had been easily achieved, the early decades of
empire proved much more difficult. The first problem was Dom Pedro himself:
headstrong and autocratic, he became increasingly estranged from his
subjects, devoting more attention to...
The War of the Triple Alliance
With the rebellions in the provinces, the army became increasingly important
in Brazilian political life. Pedro insisted they stay out of domestic
politics, but his policy of diverting the generals by allowing them
to control foreign policy...
The end of slavery
From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century around ten million Africans
were transported to Brazil as slaves - ten times as many as were shipped
to the United States - yet the death rate in Brazil was so great that
in 1860 Brazil's black.
The end of slavery was also the death knell of the monarchy. Since the
1870s the intelligentsia, deeply influenced by French liberalism, had
turned against the emperor and agitated for a republic. By the 1880s
they had been joined by the officer corps,...
Coffee with milk - and sugar
The years from 1890 to 1930 were politically undistinguished, but saw
Brazil rapidly transformed economically and socially by large-scale
immigration from Europe and Japan; they were decades of swift growth
and swelling cities, which saw a...
The revolution of 1930
The revolution of 1930 that brought the populist Getulio Vargas to power
was a critical event. Vargas dominated Brazilian politics for the next
quarter-century, and the Vargas years were a time of radical change,
marking a decisive break with...
Vargas and the Estado Novo
It was not just Vargas who took power in 1930, but a whole new generation
of young, energetic administrators, who set about transforming the economy
and the political system. Vargas played the nationalist card with great
success, nationalizing the oil,...
The death of Vargas
Eurico Dutra proved a colourless figure, and when Vargas ran for the
presidency in 1950 he won a crushing victory, the old dictator "returning
on the arm of the people", as he wrote later. But he had powerful
enemies, in the armed forces and on...
JK and Brasilia
Juscelino Kubitschek , "JK" to Brazilians, president from
1956 to 1961, proved just the man to fix Brazil's attention on the future
rather than the past. He combined energy and imagination with integrity
and great political skill, acquired...
1964: The road to military rule
At the time, the military coup of 1964 was considered a temporary hiccup
in Brazil's postwar democracy, but it lasted 21 years and left a very
bitter taste. The first period of military rule saw the famous economic
miracle, when the economy...
Military rule
The military moved swiftly to dismantle democracy. Congress was dissolved,
those representatives not to military taste being removed. It then reconvened
with only two parties, an official government and an official opposition
("The difference,"...
Opening up the Amazon
The first step towards opening up the vast interior of the Amazon was
taken by Kubitschek, who built a dirt highway linking Brasilia to Belem.
But things really got going in 1970, when Medici realized that the Amazon
could be used as a huge...
The abertura
Growing popular resentment of the military could not be contained indefinitely,
especially when the economy turned sour. By the late 1970s debt, rising
inflation and unemployment were turning the economy from a success story
into a joke, and the military...
The New Republic: Crisis and corruption
Tragically, the New Republic was orphaned at birth. The night before
his inauguration, Tancredo was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation
on a bleeding stomach tumour: it proved benign, but in hospital he picked
up an infection and six weeks later...
Brazil in the 1990s
Despite everything, Brazil still managed to begin the next decade on
a hopeful note, with the inauguration in 1990 of Fernando Collor de
Melo , the first properly elected president for thirty years, after
a heated but peaceful campaign had...
Cardoso: Stability and reform
Uniquely among modern Brazilian presidents, Cardoso, a donnish ex-academic
from Sao Paulo, proved able and effective. Ironically, before he became
a politician he was one of the world's most respected left-wing theorists
of economic development. His...
|
Brazil History
