Brazil Research Paper

658 Words2 Pages

The Portuguese were the first European settlers to arrive in the area. They were led by adventurous Pedro Cabral, who began the colonial period in 1500. The Portuguese found native Indians. Most tribes had limited agriculture and temporary dwellings, although villages often had as many as 5000 inhabitants. Cultural life appears to have been well developed, although both tribal warfare and cannibalism were ubiquitous. The few remaining traces of Brazil's Indian tribes reveal little of their lifestyle, unlike the evidence from other Andean tribes. Today, fewer than 200,000 of Brazil's indigenous people live, most of whom inhabit the jungle areas. Other Portuguese explorers followed Cabral, in search of valuable goods for European trade but also for unsettled land and the opportunity to escape poverty in Portugal itself. The only item of value they discovered was the Pau do Brasil (brazil wood tree) from which they created red dye. Unlike the colonizing philosophy of the Spanish, the Portuguese in Brazil were much less focused at first on conquering, controlling, and developing the country. Most were sailors, who were far more interested in profitable trade and subsistence agriculture than in territorial expansion. The country's interior remained unexplored. Nonetheless, sugar soon came to Brazil, and with it came imported slaves. To a degree unequaled in most of the American colonies, the Portuguese settlers frequently intermarried with both the Indians and the African slaves, and there were also mixed marriages between the Africans and Indians. As a result, Brazil's population is intermingled to a degree that is unseen elsewhere. Most Brazilians possess some combination of European, African, Amerindian, Asian, and... ... middle of paper ... ...zil has the sixth largest population in the world--about 148 million people--which has doubled in the past 30 years. Because of its size, there are only 15 people per sq. km, concentrated mainly along the coast and in the major cities, where two-thirds of the people now live: over 19 million in greater Sao Paulo and 10 million in greater Rio. The immigrant Portuguese language was greatly influenced by the numerous Indian and African dialects they encountered, but it remains the dominant language in Brazil today. In fact, the Brazilian dialect has become the dominant influence in the development of the Portuguese language, for the simple reason that Brazil has 15 times the population of Portugal and a much more dynamic linguistic environment. Trade/ Economy Its economy is the largest in Latin American nations and the second largest in the western hemisphere.

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