Anna Ternova

26 August 2016
The Forging of a People
In the 1500s, the King of Portugal set off a fleet of men into the Atlantic with a
destination set on India; however, their course took them more west and they ended up on the
shoreline of Brazil. They anchored near a place the Portuguese would call Porto Seguro (today, a
popular beach resort). On shore, they were greeted by a group of natives, part of the Tupispeaking tribe. Both parties exchanged gifts, and after the Tupi started imitating the Portuguese
as they held mass on the beach, there was hope of converting these natives into Christians. After
finding no immediate evidence of any precious metals, the fleet sailed off again towards India a
week later with intents of returning in the future. A year later, Amerigo Vespucci led another
expedition to Brazil. Over the next three centuries, the positive relationship between the Indians
and Portuguese grew. Portuguese men were encouraged by government and church to marry the
indigenous women due to Portugals small population.
The coast of Brazil was quickly expanding with the installment of more trading posts,
encouraging a growing presence of the Frenchwho started becoming a threat to Portugal and
were eventually expelled out of the country. The Portuguese were forming more permanent
settlements which deteriorated relations between the Indians and Portuguese, turning from
kinship to enslavement of the natives. Many of the natives died in the following years due to
them having no immunity to the various diseases that were brought over from Europe.
The Jesuit priests that were dispatched to Brazil from Portugal ended up becoming very
powerful, forcing conversion to Christianity onto the indigenous people. Around the 1580s, a
group of bandeirantes was born; they were an opposing force to the Jesuits whose purpose was to
find autonomous Indians to bring back as slaves. Though they were rivals, the bandeirantes and
the Jesuits were important in the foundation of early Brazil and helped to extend Brazils borders
a lot further than the Treaty of Tordesillas originally intended them to be. Only a century later
were the Jesuits permanently expelled by the Marquis of Pombal, who then also declared all
Indians to be free citizens.
Around this time, sugar cane started to become a large commodity. Labor to work the
sugar mills was needed, and so began the long and difficult history of slavery as African slaves
began to be exported. Over 4.9 million African slaves were imported into Brazil between 1500
and 1866more than any other country and for a longer period of time. Although Brazil had the
highest import of slaves, it cannot be said that slavery was the worst there compared to anywhere
else. Once the gold rush hit in the 1800s, many slaves were fortunately able to buy their freedom
through freelance gold panning. By the first decade of the nineteenth century, free blacks
outnumbered slaves. The gold rush also allowed for settlement expansion, meaning Brazilians
were no longer clustered along the coast. It also allowed the country to become home to a more

diverse selection of people, since many of them poured in when they caught wind of the rush.
Though the gold rush would have been expected to help the economyand in some sense it did
private interest trumped the public good and rule of law, making economic development and
social justice a long and grueling road for Brazil.
Reflection
In the previous chapters, one of my questions was why slavery had more of an impact in
Brazil than in the USA. Considering America only had about 400,000 slaves imported during this
time, whereas Brazil had close to five million, it makes sense as to why slavery had deeper roots
in Brazil, and why it was harder to abolish. A large similarity between the gold rush in America
and Brazil is that both events allowed for more permanent settlements, across larger parts of the
country, and had significantly negative effects on the natives that lived there. It is interesting to
learn about other countries histories and realize all the similar events that happened both there
and in your home country. It is also fascinating to think about what snowball of events would
have happened had one little thing changed in the past, such as someone else discovering Brazil,
or having discovered it a lot earlier than they originally did. With a different timeline, Brazil
might have actually reached the status of being a first-world countrylike the USAby now;
or, things could have gone in the completely opposite direction. Either way, Brazil is a quickly
developing country and is on the way to overcoming its troublesome past.