page_title: Empire of Brazil
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: Empire of Brazil / Society / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: English: First row (from left to right): Unknown white girl in Rio de Janeiro city (Rio de Janeiro province), c.1889, by Moreira, Roltgen and Villaça ((????-????; source: Ermakoff, 2006) Unknown young white young woman in Rio de Janeiro city (Rio de Janeiro province), c.1891, by Santos Moreira (????-????; source: Ermakoff, 2006) Unknown white woman in Rio de Janeiro city (Rio de Janeiro province), c.1860, by Carneiro &amp; Smith (????-????; source: Ermakoff, 2006) Unknown young white boy, c.1865, by J. F. Villela (????-????: Lago, 2005) Unknown young white man, c.1858, by unknown (????-????: Lago, 2005) Unknown white man, c.1860, by unknwon (????-????; source: Ermakoff, 2006) Second row (from left to right): Mulatto young woman in Salvador (Bahia province), c.1869, by Alberto Henschel (1827-1882; source: Vasquez, 2003) Mulatto young woman in Recife (Pernambuco province), c.1870, by Alberto Henschel (1827-1882; source: Lago, 2005) Cafuso young woman in Salvador (Bahia province), c.1869, by Alberto Henschel (1827-1882; source: Vasquez, 2003) Cafuso girl in Recife (Pernambuco province), c.1870, by Alberto Henschel (1827-1882; source: Lago, 2005) Caboclo girl in Recife (Pernambuco province), c.1858, by Auguste Stahl (1828-1877; source: Lago, 2005) Caboclo man in Rio de Janeiro city (Rio de Janeiro province), c.1895, by Marc Ferrez (1843-1923; source: Vasquez, 2003) Third row (from left to right): Unknown Indian girl from the unknown tribe in Mato Grosso province, 1882, by Marc Ferrez (1843-1923; source: Lago, 2005) Unknown Indian man from the "Umauá" tribe in "Japurá" river, 1865, by Albert Frisch (c.1840-after 1905; source: Lago, 2005) Unknown Indian woman from an unknown tribe in Amazon rainforest, 1865, by Albert Frisch (c.1840-after 1905; source: Lago, 2005) Unknown black boy, c.1874, by Auguste Stahl (1828-1877; source: Lago, 2005) Unknown black young woman in Pernambuco province, c.1874, by Auguste Stahl (1828-1877; source: Lago, 2005) Unknown black man, c.1865, by Christiano Jr. (1832-1903; source: Lago, 2005)
context_page_description: The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom Pedro I and his son Dom Pedro II. A colony of the Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil became the seat of the Portuguese colonial Empire in 1808, when the Portuguese Prince regent, later King Dom João VI, fled from Napoleon's invasion of Portugal and established himself and his government in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. João VI later returned to Portugal, leaving his eldest son and heir, Pedro, to rule the Kingdom of Brazil as regent. On 7 September 1822, Pedro declared the independence of Brazil and, after waging a successful war against his father's kingdom, was acclaimed on 12 October as Pedro I, the first Emperor of Brazil. The new country was huge, sparsely populated and ethnically diverse.
context_section_description: Since the second half of the 18th century, when Brazil was still a colony, the government had attempted to gather data regarding the population. However, few captaincies (later called provinces) collected the requested information. After independence the government instituted a commission for statistics in an 1829 decree with a mandate to hold a national census. The commission was a failure and was disbanded in 1834. In the ensuing years, provincial governments were tasked with collecting census information, but their census reports were often incomplete or not submitted at all. In 1851, another attempt at a nationwide census failed when rioting broke out. This was the result of the erroneous belief among Brazilians of mixed-race descent that the survey was a subterfuge designed to enslave anyone having African blood.
  The first true national census with exhaustive and broad coverage was carried out in 1872. The small number of people and small number of towns reported by the census reveal Brazil's enormous territory to have been sparsely populated. It showed Brazil as having a total population of 9,930,478 inhabitants. Estimates made by the government in prior decades showed 4,000,000 inhabitants in 1823 and gave a figure of 7,000,700 in 1854. The population was distributed across 20 provinces and the Neutral Municipality (the Empire's capital) with 641 municipalities.
  Among the free population 23.4% of males and 13.4% of females were considered literate. Men represented 52% (5,123,869) of the total population. Figures for the population by age showed 24.6% were children younger than 10 years old; 21.1% were adolescents and young men between 11 and 20; 32.9% were adults between 21 and 40; 8.4% were between 41 and 50; 12.8% were between 51 and 70; and lastly, only 3.4% were over 71. The residents in the combined northeast and southeast regions comprised 87.2% of the nation's population. The second national census was held in 1890 when the Brazilian republic was only a few months old. Its results showed that the population had grown to 14,333,915 inhabitants since the 1872 census.
caption: 19th-century Brazilians. 1st row: White Brazilians. 2nd row: Brown Brazilians (left to right: two female mulattoes, two female cafuzos and a caboclo girl and man). 3rd row: three Brazilian Indians of different tribes followed by Afro-Brazilians of distinct ethnic background
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