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...
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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...
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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From empire to
republic
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,...
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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...
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The revolution of
1930
The revolution of
1930 that brought
the populist Getúlio
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...
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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,...
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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...
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JK and Brasília
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...
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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...
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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,"...
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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 Brasília to
Belém. But things
really got going in
1970, when Médici
realized that the
Amazon could be used
as a huge...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Cardoso:
Stability and reform
Uniquely among
modern Brazilian
presidents, Cardoso,
a donnish ex-academic
from São 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...
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