page_title: History of the book in Brazil
section_title: Colonial Period
hierarchical_section_title: History of the book in Brazil / Colonial Period
caption_attribution_description: Picture of Colégio Santo Inácio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
context_page_description: The history of the book in Brazil focuses on the development of the access to publishing resources and acquisition of the book in the country, covering a period extending from the beginning of the editorial activity during colonization to today's publishing market, including the history of publishing and bookstores that allowed the modern accessibility to the book.
context_section_description: It is believed that printing was only introduced by the settlers and colonisers in the colonies, which had a highly developed indigenous culture that the colonial power wanted to supplant or suppress. This idea is supported by the Brazilian historian Nelson Werneck Sodré  and others. Printing, in the first two centuries of Portuguese and Spanish colonization, was in part a result of Christian evangelization. It was deployed through religious initiative, so that its production was destined to meet the clergy's needs and that of the missions.
  "História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil", by Serafim Leite, says that the library of Colégio Santo Inácio, in O Morro do Castelo, Rio de Janeiro. (This was a landform that existed in the city of Rio, the hill being one of the foundation points of the city in the sixteenth century and which housed landmarks of great importance, such as colonial forts and buildings of the Jesuits. Nevertheless, it was destroyed in an urban reform in 1922.) This centre is believed to have undertaken some printed jobs around 1724, the accuracy of the claim not be ascertained. It could be referring to two books of the time, "Vocabulário de la lengua guarany", by Antônio Luiz Restrepo (1722), and "Arte de la lengua guarany", which were printed in a region that is currently part of Brazil, but which at the time belonged to Paraguay, Pueblo de Santa Maria la Mayor.
  In most colonies, the necessities of governance made it an imperative to accept printing, and only in Portuguese Latin America did the administration remained so elementary that this need was dispensed with. This need only become imminent when the government of the colony suffered the impact of the Napoleonic invasion, a few years later.
  The first attempt to introduce effective printing into Brazil was made by the Dutch, during the period of their occupation of northeastern Brazil, between 1630 and 1650.
  During the Dutch occupation, negotiations between Pernambuco and the Netherlands resulted in the selection of a printer, Janszonon Pieter, to be in charge of printing in Recife, but he died as soon as he arrived in Brazil on 3 August 1643. Two years later, the Dutch West Indies Company was still looking out for a printer without success. At the time, Maurice of Nassau had already left, and the pressured Dutch no longer gave priority to the subject.
caption: Colégio Santo Inácio (St. Ignatius College) is believed to have crafted the first printed works in Brazil, in 1724.
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