Rival Colonial Models: Portuguese Brazil, English, French, and Dutch America

Portuguese colonization of Brazil began when Pedro Álvares Cabral, on an expedition bound for India, arrived by chance on the Brazilian coast on April 22, 1500, formally claiming the territory for the Portuguese crown; early contact centered on exploiting brazilwood, the dye-producing tree that gave the land its name. In 1534, King John III divided the coast into fifteen hereditary captaincies granted to donatários with broad administrative powers, but most failed economically, with only Pernambuco (under Duarte Coelho) and São Vicente achieving sustained development, prompting the Crown to establish a centralized general government in 1549 under Tomé de Sousa, with Salvador da Bahia as its first capital. The colonial economy organized itself around sugarcane on large engenhos, especially in Pernambuco and Bahia, relying from the mid-sixteenth century on enslaved African labor on a scale that eventually made Brazil the largest single recipient of enslaved Africans in the Americas, while "bandeirantes" from São Paulo pushed the frontier inland well beyond the Tordesillas line. The discovery of gold in Minas Gerais around 1690-1700 triggered a mining boom that shifted Brazil's economic center south, moving the capital to Rio de Janeiro in 1763; Brazil achieved independence in 1822 as a monarchical empire under Pedro I.