Brazil: Did you mean...?

With a wealth of natural resources, Brazil was by far the most important colony in the Portuguese empire and was, at one time or another, the world’s leading producer of sugar, diamonds, and tobacco. Colonised from the 1530s, most settlements...

The Portuguese Empire was established from the 15th century and eventually stretched from the Americas to Japan. Very often a string of coastal trading centres with defensive fortifications, there were larger territorial colonies like Brazil...

An 1816 painting of Rio de Janeiro. Rio was made sole capital of Portuguese Brazil in 1763. Painted by Nicolas-Antoine Taunay. (Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio)

A painting of a slave market in Portuguese Brazil by Jean-Baptiste Debret from an original 19th-century engraving by Johann Moritz Rugendas.

A c. 1770 illustration by Carlos Julião showing enslaved market women in Rio de Janeiro, Portuguese Brazil.

A c. 1640 painting showing a Dutch ship in the harbour of Recife, Portuguese Brazil. Painted by Abraham Willaerts. (Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam)

Portuguese Angola in southwest Africa was the first European colony on that continent. While settlement from 1571 proved problematic in the interior, the Portuguese did obtain a large number of slaves which they shipped to their Atlantic...

Harvesting Coffee, Brazil, 1830s, lithograph by Johann Moritz Rugendas, first published in Voyage Pittoresque dans le Bresil, Paris, 1835; also published in same year in German. Reprinted in Viagem Pitoresca Atravé do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro...

The Portuguese royal family evacuates Lisbon for Brazil as the French army closes in at the start of the Peninsular War (1807-1814). Painting by Henri L'Evêque, 1812.

European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous cultures. Among their most...