page_title: Portuguese people
section_title: Portuguese ancestry in the Brazilian population
hierarchical_section_title: Portuguese people / List of countries by population of Portuguese heritage / Portuguese ancestry in the Brazilian population
caption_attribution_description: Português: Passaporte de um imigrante português da região do Minho, Concelho de Esposende, Distrito de Braga.
context_page_description: The Portuguese people are a Romance nation native to Portugal who share a common Portuguese culture, ancestry and language. Their predominant religion is Christianity, mainly Roman Catholicism, though other religions and irreligion are also present, especially among the younger generations. The Portuguese people's heritage largely derives from the pre-Celts and Celts, who were Romanized after the conquest of the region by the ancient Romans. Y-DNA ratios in northern and central Portugal today indicate a small percentage of descent in male lineages from Germanic tribes who arrived after the Roman period as ruling elites, including the Suebi, Vandals and Visigoths, who ruled for circa three hundred years. Finally, the Moorish occupation of Iberia also left a small Jewish and Arab-Berber genetic contribution in the Iberian Peninsula.
  The Roman Republic conquered the Iberian Peninsula during the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. from the extensive maritime empire of Carthage during the series of Punic Wars. As a result of Roman colonization, the Portuguese language stems primarily from Vulgar Latin.
context_section_description: In colonial times, over 700,000 Portuguese settled in Brazil, and most of them went there during the gold rush of the 18th century.
  Brazil received more European settlers during its colonial era than any other country in the Americas. Between 1500 and 1760, about 700,000 Europeans immigrated to Brazil, compared to 530,000 European immigrants in the United States.
  They managed to be the only significant European population to populate the country during colonization, even though there were French and Dutch invasions. The Portuguese migration was strongly marked by the predominance of men (colonial reports from the 16th and 17th centuries almost always report the absence or rarity of Portuguese women). This lack of women worried the Jesuits, who asked the Portuguese King to send any kind of Portuguese women to Brazil, even the socially undesirable (e.g. prostitutes or women with mental maladies such as Down Syndrome) if necessary. The Crown responded by sending groups of Iberian orphan maidens to marry both cohorts of marriageable men, the nobles and the peasants. Some of which were even primarily studying to be nuns.
  The Crown also shipped over many Órfãs d'El-Rei of what was considered "good birth" to colonial Brazil to marry Portuguese settlers of high rank. Órfãs d'El-Rei (modern Portuguese órfãs do rei) literally translates to "Orphans of the King", and they were Portuguese female orphans in nubile age. There were noble and non-noble maidens and they were daughters of military compatriots who died in battle for the king or noblemen who died overseas and whose upbringing was paid by the Crown. Bahia's port in the East received one of the first groups of orphans in 1551. The multiplication of descendants of Portuguese settlers also happened to a large degree through miscegenation with black and amerindian women. In fact, in colonial Brazil the Portuguese men competed for the women, because among the African slaves the female component was also a small minority. This explains why the Portuguese men left more descendants in Brazil than the Amerindian or African men did. The Indian and African women were "dominated" by the Portuguese men, preventing men of color to find partners with whom they could have children. Added to this, White people had a much better quality of life and therefore a lower mortality rate than the black and indigenous population. Then, even though the Portuguese migration during colonial Brazil was smaller (3.2 million Indians estimated at the beginning of colonization and 3.6 million Africans brought since then, compared to the descendants of the over 700,000 Portuguese immigrants) the "white" population (whose ancestry was predominantly Portuguese) was as large as the "non-white" population in the early 19th century, just before independence from Portugal. After independence from Portugal in 1822, around 1.7 million Portuguese immigrants settled in Brazil.
  Portuguese immigration into Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries was marked by its concentration in the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The immigrants opted mostly for urban centers. Portuguese women appeared with some regularity among immigrants, with percentage variation in different decades and regions of the country. However, even among the more recent influx of Portuguese immigrants at the turn of the 20th century, there were 319 men to each 100 women among them. The Portuguese were different from other immigrants in Brazil, like the Germans, or Italians who brought many women along with them (even though the proportion of men was higher in any immigrant community). Despite the small female proportion, Portuguese men married mainly Portuguese women. Female immigrants rarely married Brazilian men. In this context, the Portuguese had a rate of endogamy which was higher than any other European immigrant community, and behind only the Japanese among all immigrants.
  Even with Portuguese heritage, many Portuguese-Brazilians identify themselves as being simply Brazilians, since Portuguese culture was a dominant cultural influence in the fo
caption: Passport of an immigrant from the Braga District to Brazil
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