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The Landing of Cabral in Porto Seguro; oil on canvas by Oscar Pereira da Silva, 1904.Collection of the National Historical Museum of Brazil. The first arrival of European explorers to the territory of present-day Brazil is often credited to Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral, who sighted the land later named Island of Vera Cruz, near Monte Pascoal, on 22 April 1500 while leading an ...
1892 map of South America Animation showing geographic evolution of European colonies and breakaway states in South America, 1700 to present Contemporary political map of South America The history of South America is the study of the past, particularly the written record, oral histories, and traditions, passed down from generation to generation ...
The name Brazil is a shortened form of Terra do Brasil ("Land of Brazil"), a reference to the brazilwood tree. The name was given in the early 16th century to the territories leased to the merchant consortium led by Fernão de Loronha, to exploit brazilwood for the production of wood dyes for the European textile industry.
Brazil, [b] officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, [c] is the largest and easternmost country in South America. It is the world's fifth-largest country by area and the seventh largest by population , with over 212 million people.
The United Provinces of South America (a former Spanish colony later known as Argentina) formally annexed the Brazilian province. The Empire responded with a declaration of war, which "was to draw Brazil into a long, inglorious, and ultimately futile war in the south" – the Cisplatine War. [53]
Brazil conducts its first official census, the population is 9,930,478. [116] 1873–1874: Revolt of the Muckers in Rio Grande do Sul. [117] 1876: 28 April: Francisco, a slave, becomes the last person to be executed in Brazil, after murdering his masters, being hanged in Pilar, Alagoas. 1877–1878: Grande Seca (Great Drought) in Northeastern ...
Aggressive promotion of new industry turned around the economy by 1933. Brazil's leaders in the 1920s and 1930s decided that Argentina's implicit foreign policy goal was to isolate Portuguese-speaking Brazil from Spanish-speaking neighbours, thus facilitating the expansion of Argentine economic and political influence in South America.
The failed efforts in Spanish America to keep together most of the initial large states that emerged from independence— Gran Colombia, the Federal Republic of Central America [20] and the United Provinces of South America—resulted a number of domestic and interstate conflicts, which plagued the new countries. Brazil, in contrast to its ...