page_title: History of Rio de Janeiro
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: History of Rio de Janeiro / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Military Academy in Rio de Janeiro, 1888. Português: Escola Militar, praia Vermelha, Rio de Janeiro, 1888.
context_page_description: Several years after the Portuguese first explored Brazil, French traders in search of pau-brasil reached the rich area extending from the Cape Frio coast to the beaches and islands of Guanabara Bay, the economic and, above all, strategic importance of which was already well-known.f
context_section_description: In 1555, one of the islands of Guanabara Bay, now called Villegagnon Island, was occupied by 500 French colonists under admiral Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon. Consequently, Villegagnon built Fort Coligny on the island when attempting to establish the France Antarctique colony, which the French called Henriville in honor of Henry II of France.
  The Portuguese wanted to expel the French from that part of the South American coast which had been granted to them by the Treaty of Tordesillas. The task was given to Estácio de Sá, a nephew of Gov. Mem de Sá of Brazil, who in 1565 occupied the plain between Dog Face Hill (Morro Cara de Cão) and the Sugar Loaf and Urca mounts, thus laying the foundations of the future town of Rio de Janeiro. After two years (1565–67) of bloody battles, in which Estácio de Sá was killed and the French expelled, Mem de Sá chose a new site for the town, farther inland on the coast of the bay, at the top of the Hill of Rest (Morro do Descanso), or St. Januarius Hill (São Januário), later called the Castle Hill (Morro do Castelo). In 1568 the settlement was laid out in the form of a medieval citadel, protected by a bulwark and cannons.
  The surrounding fertile land, allotted to Portuguese settlers by the Portuguese king in enormous plots called sesmarias, was planted with sugarcane, which was to provide the colony with its main source of income. In 1660 the community became the seat of the government of the southern captaincies (Portuguese administrative units) of Brazil. In the second half of the 17th century, the captaincy population grew to 8,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of whom were probably African slaves and Indians.
  At the beginning of the 18th century, Brazil began to engage in gold and diamond mining, which brought about remarkable changes in the colony's economy and stimulated a great migration from Europe, thereby increasing the number of people of European ancestry. The former village became a town of 24,000 in 1749. When the colonial capital was transferred from Salvador, Bahia to Rio de Janeiro in 1763, the town expanded farther, far beyond its walls. The remains of the monumental Roman-style aqueduct Arcos da Lapa (Lapa Arches) built at this time still stand in the city.
  At the end of the 18th century, the town's economy, as well as that of the colony as a whole, was in a crisis because of the decline of the mines and competition from Central America for the world sugar market. In 1796 the value of exports from Rio's port was less than half of what it had been in 1760.
  Coffee production and the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in 1808 again brought prosperity to the colony. By 1815, when Brazil became a kingdom, Rio de Janeiro was large enough to accommodate a foreign population. At about that time the city's original appearance was being transformed; from 1808 to 1818 some 600 houses and 100 country houses were built and older buildings were restored. Many streets were lighted and paved, more land was reclaimed, new roads were opened, and new public fountains were installed. Among new institutions established were the Royal Press, the Royal Library, the Theatre of Saint John, the Academy of Fine Arts, the Botanical Garden, and the Bank of Brazil. When King John VI returned to Portugal in 1821, Rio had almost 113,000 inhabitants and 13,500 buildings, and the town had extended both northward and southward. A year later Brazil was independent.
  Expansion of coffee plantations in the State of Rio de Janeiro gave a new impulse to the city's development. Nobles and bourgeois moved their residences north to the São Cristóvão district. Merchants and English bankers chose to live around the Glória and Flamengo areas in the south, or they established their residences in the nearby Botafogo and Laranjeiras districts. The French, on the other hand, lived in country houses scattered in the Tijuca area farther westward.
  In that era, as Brazil expanded its world export trade in such products as coffee, cotton, sugar, and rubber, the city changed its appearance and the traces of its colonial pas
caption: Military academy.
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