History

Main articles: History of Brazil and Timeline of Brazilian history

Pre-Cabraline era

Main article: History of Brazil § Precolonial history

Megaliths in the Solstice Archaeological Park, in Amapá, erected between 500 and 2000 years ago, probably to carry out astronomical observations.

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.^[33][34] The earliest pottery ever found in the Western Hemisphere was excavated in the Amazon basin of Brazil and radiocarbon dated to 8,000 years ago (6000 BC). The pottery was found near Santarém and provides evidence that the tropical forest region supported a complex prehistoric culture.^[35]
Around the time of the Portuguese arrival, the territory of current day Brazil had an estimated indigenous population of 7 million people,^[36] mostly semi-nomadic who subsisted on hunting, fishing, gathering, and migrant agriculture. The indigenous population of Brazil comprised several large indigenous ethnic groups (e.g. the Tupis, Guaranis, Gês and Arawaks). The Tupí people were subdivided into the Tupiniquins and Tupinambás, and there were also many subdivisions of the other groups.^[37]
Before the arrival of Europeans, the boundaries between these groups and their subgroups were marked by wars that arose from differences in culture, language and moral beliefs.^[38] These wars also involved large-scale military actions on land and water, with cannibalistic rituals on prisoners of war.^[39][40] While heredity had some weight, leadership status was more subdued over time, than allocated in succession ceremonies and conventions.^[41] Slavery among the Indians had a different meaning than it had for Europeans, since it originated from a diverse socio-economic organization, in which asymmetries were translated into kinship relations.^[42]

Portuguese colonization

Main article: Colonial Brazil

Representation of the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in Porto Seguro, 1500.

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.^[43] The Portuguese encountered indigenous peoples divided into several tribes, most of whom spoke languages of the Tupi–Guarani family, and fought among themselves.^[44] Though the first settlement was founded in 1532, colonization was effectively begun in 1534, when King Dom João III of Portugal divided the territory into the fifteen private and autonomous Captaincy Colonies of Brazil.^[45][46]
However, the decentralized and unorganized tendencies of the captaincy colonies proved problematic, and in 1549 the Portuguese king restructured them into the Governorate General of Brazil, a single and centralized Portuguese colony in South America.^[46][47] 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.^{[48][49][50][51]} By the mid-16th century, cane sugar had become Brazil's most important exportation product,^[44][52] and slaves purchased in Sub-Saharan Africa, in the slave market of Western Africa^[53] (not only those from Portuguese allies of their colonies in Angola and Mozambique), had become its largest import,^[54][55] to cope with plantations of sugarcane, due to increasing international demand for Brazilian sugar.^[56][57]

Painting showing the arrest of Tiradentes; he was sentenced to death for his involvement in the best known movement for independence in Colonial Brazil.

By the end of the 17th century, sugarcane exports began to decline,^[58] and the discovery of gold by bandeirantes in the 1690s would become the new backbone of the colony's economy, fostering a Brazilian Gold Rush^[59] which attracted thousands of new settlers to Brazil from Portugal and all Portuguese colonies around the world.^[60] This increased level of immigration in turn caused some conflicts between newcomers and old settlers.^[61]
Portuguese expeditions known as Bandeiras gradually advanced the Portugal colonial original frontiers in South America to approximately the current Brazilian borders.^[62][63] 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.^[64]
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,^[65] and to repress all movements for autonomy or independence, such as the Minas Conspiracy.^[66]

United Kingdom with Portugal

Main article: United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves

The Acclamation of King João VI of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves in Rio de Janeiro, 6 February 1818

In late 1807, Spanish and Napoleonic forces threatened the security of continental Portugal, causing Prince Regent João, in the name of Queen Maria I, to move the royal court from Lisbon to Brazil.^[67] There they established some of Brazil's first financial institutions, such as its local stock exchanges,^[68] and its National Bank, additionally ending the Portuguese monopoly on Brazilian trade and opening Brazil to other nations. In 1809, in retaliation for being forced into exile, the Prince Regent ordered the Portuguese conquest of French Guiana.^[69]
With the end of the Peninsular War in 1814, the courts of Europe demanded that Queen Maria I and Prince Regent João return to Portugal, deeming it unfit for the head of an ancient European monarchy to reside in a colony. In 1815, in order to justify continuing to live in Brazil, where the royal court had thrived for the past six years, the Crown established the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves, thus creating a pluricontinental transatlantic monarchic state.^[70] However, such a ploy didn't last long, since the leadership in Portugal resentful with the new status of its larger colony, continued to require the return of court to Lisbon (as postulated by the Liberal Revolution of 1820), as well as groups of Brazilians, impatient for practical and real changes still demanded independence and a republic, as showed by the 1817 Pernambucan Revolt.^[70] In 1821, as a demand of revolutionaries who had taken the city of Porto,^[71] D. João VI was unable to hold out any longer, and departed for Lisbon. There he swore oath to the new constitution, leaving his son, Prince Pedro de Alcântara, as Regent of the Kingdom of Brazil.^[72]

Independent Empire

Main articles: Independence of Brazil and Empire of Brazil

Declaration of the Brazilian independence by Prince Pedro (later Emperor Pedro I) on 7 September 1822.

Tensions between Portuguese and Brazilians increased, and the Portuguese Cortes, guided by the new political regime imposed by the 1820 Liberal Revolution, tried to re-establish Brazil as a colony.^[73] The Brazilians refused to yield, and Prince Pedro decided to stand with them, declaring the country's independence from Portugal on 7 September 1822.^[74] A month later, Prince Pedro was declared the first Emperor of Brazil, with the regnal title of Dom Pedro I, resulting in the foundation of the Empire of Brazil.^[75]
The Brazilian War of Independence, which had already begun along this process, spread through northern, northeastern regions and in Cisplatina province.^[76] With the last Portuguese soldiers surrendering on 8 March 1824,^[77] Portugal officially recognized Brazil on 29 August 1825.^[78]
On 7 April 1831, worn down by years of administrative turmoil and political dissensions with both liberal and conservative sides of politics, including an attempt of republican secession,^[79] as well as unreconciled with the way that absolutists in Portugal had given to the succession of King John VI, Pedro I went to Portugal to reclaim his daughter's crown, abdicating the Brazilian throne in favor of his five-year-old son and heir (who thus became the Empire's second monarch, with the regnal title of Dom Pedro II).^[80]

Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil between 1831 and 1889.

As the new Emperor could not exert his constitutional powers until he became of age, a regency was set up by the National Assembly.^[81] In the absence of a charismatic figure who could represent a moderate face of power, during this period a series of localized rebellions took place, as the Cabanagem, the Malê Revolt, the Balaiada, the Sabinada, and the Ragamuffin War, which emerged from the dissatisfaction of the provinces with the central power, coupled with old and latent social tensions peculiar of a vast, slaveholding and newly independent nation state.^[82] This period of internal political and social upheaval, which included the Praieira revolt, was overcome only at the end of the 1840s, years after the end of the regency, which occurred with the premature coronation of Pedro II in 1841.^[83]
During the last phase of the monarchy, internal political debate was centered on the issue of slavery. The Atlantic slave trade was abandoned in 1850,^[84] as a result of the British Aberdeen Act, but only in May 1888 after a long process of internal mobilization and debate for an ethical and legal dismantling of slavery in the country, was the institution formally abolished.^[85]
The foreign affairs in the monarchy were basically related issues with the countries of the Southern Cone with which Brazil has borders. Long after the Cisplatine War that resulted in independence for Uruguay,^[86] Brazil won three international wars during the 58-year reign of Pedro II. These were the Platine War, the Uruguayan War and the devastating Paraguayan War, the largest war effort in Brazilian history.^[87][88]
On 15 November 1889, worn out by years of economic stagnation, in attrition with the majority of Army officers, as well as with rural and financial elites (for different reasons), the monarchy was overthrown by a military coup.^[89]