Before the first Portuguese explorers, led by Pedro Alvares Cabral, arrived in Brazil in 1500, Brazil is thought to have been inhabited by semi-nomadic populations for at least 10,000 years. Over the next three centuries, it was resettled by the Portuguese and exploited mainly for wood (pau-brasil), then sugarcane, coffee beans and gold mining. The colony’s manpower used in these activities was initially composed of enslaved peoples, firstly Amerindians and then, after 1532, mainly Africans.
The only recorded transcontinental relocation of a royal family, headed by Queen Maria I of Portugal and her son and regent, the future João VI of Portugal, fled from Napoleon’s armies and relocated to Rio de Janeiro, together with the government and nobility. Although they returned in 1821, the interlude led to the opening of commercial ports to the United Kingdom — at the time isolated from most European ports by Napoleon — and to the elevation of Brazil to the status of a United Kingdom under the Portuguese Crown.
Internet: <www.wikipedia .org> (adapted).
