page_title: Colonial Brazil
section_title: The Age of Exploration
hierarchical_section_title: Colonial Brazil / Initial European contact and early colonial history (1494–1530) / The Age of Exploration
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Brazil in the Miller Atlas of 1519.
context_page_description: Colonial Brazil comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal as the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.
  During the early 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the economic exploitation of the territory was based first on brazilwood extraction, which gave the territory its name; sugar production; and finally on gold and diamond mining. Slaves, especially those brought from Africa, provided most of the work force of the Brazilian export economy after a brief period of Indian slavery to cut brazilwood.
  In contrast to the neighboring Spanish possessions, which had several viceroyalties with jurisdiction initially over New Spain and Peru, and in the eighteenth century expanded to viceroyalties of Rio de la Plata and New Granada, the Portuguese colony of Brazil was settled mainly in the coastal area by the Portuguese and a large black slave population working sugar plantations and mines. The boom and bust economic cycles were linked to export products.
context_section_description: Portuguese seafarers in the early fifteenth century, as an extension of the Portuguese Reconquista, began to expand from a small area of the Iberian Peninsula, to seizing the Muslim fortress of Ceuta in North Africa. Its maritime exploration then proceeded down the coast of West Africa and across the Indian Ocean to the south Asian subcontinent, as well as the Atlantic islands off the coast of Africa on the way. They sought sources of gold, ivory, and African slaves, high value goods in the African trade. The Portuguese set up fortified trading "factories" (feitorias), whereby permanent, fairly small commercial settlements anchored trade in a region. The initial costs of setting up these commercial posts was borne by private investors, who in turn received hereditary titles and commercial advantages. From the Portuguese Crown's point of view, its realm was expanded with relatively little cost to itself.  On the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira, and Sāo Tomé, the Portuguese began plantation production of sugarcane using forced labor, a precedent for Brazil's sugar production in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
  The Portuguese "discovery" of Brazil was preceded by a series of treaties between the kings of Portugal and Castile, following Portuguese sailings down the coast of Africa to India and the voyages to the Caribbean of the Genoese mariner sailing for Castile, Christopher Columbus. The most decisive of these treaties was the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, which created the Tordesillas Meridian, dividing the world between the two kingdoms. All land discovered or to be discovered east of that meridian was to be the property of Portugal, and everything to the west of it went to Spain.
  The Tordesillas Meridian divided South America into two parts, leaving a large chunk of land to be exploited by the Spaniards. The Treaty of Tordesillas was arguably the most decisive event in all Brazilian history, since it determined that part of South America would be settled by Portugal instead of Spain. The present extent of Brazil's coastline is almost exactly that defined by the Treaty of Madrid, which was approved in 1750.
caption: Portuguese map by Lopo Homem (c. 1519) showing the coast of Brazil and natives extracting brazilwood, as well as Portuguese ships
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