page_title: History of Brazil
section_title: Coffee plantations
hierarchical_section_title: History of Brazil / The Kingdom and Empire of Brazil / Coffee plantations
caption_attribution_description: English: Slaves in a coffe farm in Brazil, c.1885. Português: Escravos numa fazenda de café no Brasil, c.1885.
context_page_description: The history of Brazil begins with indigenous people in Brazil. Europeans arrived in Brazil at the opening of the 16th century. The first European to claim sovereignty over Indigenous lands part of what is now the territory of the Federative Republic of Brazil on the continent of South America was Pedro Álvares Cabral on April 22, 1500 under the sponsorship of the Kingdom of Portugal. From the 16th to the early 19th century, Brazil was a colony and a part of the Portuguese Empire. The country expanded south along the coast and west along the Amazon and other inland rivers from the original 15 donatary captaincy colonies established on the northeast Atlantic coast east of the Tordesillas Line of 1494 that divided the Portuguese domain to the east from the Spanish domain to the west, although Brazil was at one time a colony of Spain. The country's borders were only finalized in the early 20th century.
  On September 7, 1822, the country declared its independence from Portugal and it became the Empire of Brazil. A military coup in 1889 established the First Brazilian Republic.
context_section_description: The coffee crop was introduced In 1720, and by 1850 Brazil was producing half of the world's coffee. The state set up a marketing board to protect and encourage the industry.
  The major export crop in the 19th century was coffee, grown on large-scale plantations in the São Paulo area.  The Zona da Mata Mineira district grew 90% of the coffee in Minas Gerais region during the 1880s and 70% during the 1920s. Most of the workers were black men, including both slaves and free.  Increasingly Italian, Spanish and Japanese immigrants provided the expanded labour force. While railway lines were built to haul the coffee beans to market, they also provided essential internal transportation for both freight and passengers, as well as providing work opportunities for a large skilled labour force. By the early 20th century, coffee accounted for 16% of Brazil's gross national product, and three quarters of its export earnings.
  The growers and exporters played major roles in politics; however, historians debate whether or not they were the most powerful actors in the political system.
  Before the 1960s, historians generally ignored the coffee industry. Coffee was not a major industry in the colonial period. In any one particular locality, the coffee industry flourished for a few decades and then moved on as the soil lost its fertility; therefore it was not deeply embedded in the history of any one locality. After independence, coffee plantations were associated with slavery, underdevelopment, and a political oligarchy, and not the modern development of state and society. Historians now recognize the importance of the industry, and there is a flourishing scholarly literature.
caption: Slaves on a fazenda (coffee farm), c. 1885
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