Brazil, the affable and amiable giant, attracts attention. It excites the imagination. It dazzles the beholder. The intensity of the light, the brightness of the color, the richness of the vegetation, the vastness of the landscape, the beauty of the people combine to make a seductive sight few have been able to resist. The alternating simplicity and complexity of the land and its inhabitants further intrigue any who delve even shallowly beneath that alluring surface. It has always been so.

Not immune to the attractions of the land, the Portuguese who discovered, explored, and settled Brazil saw it as a...

The recorded history of Brazil began with the arrival of the Portuguese. The sudden discovery of unknown land in the West surprised the experienced sailors. What they saw impressed them. They puzzled over the Indian, unlike the African and Asian they already knew, and they marveled over the lush tropical coast. The new arrivals aroused the curiosity of the indigenous Americans and also must have fired their suspicions. Although generally peaceful, the first encounters challenged both the natives and the intruders to revise their views of their environments and their world. For both, they heralded a new age, new ideas,...

Brazilʹs official colonial apprenticeship lasted more than three centuries. Social amalgamation, territorial expansion, and economic and political dependency characterized the South American colony during that long era. Portugal imposed its language, religion, and institutions, and during the last half of the sixteenth century they sent roots deep into the Brazilian soil and soul. Although other influences wrought some modifications over the following centuries, the Portuguese language and Roman Catholicism remain dominant, while the institutions, subject to differing nomenclatures and embracing superficial changes, display a startling degree of historical continuity. They still shape the present.

The Portuguese adapted quickly to the...

By the close of the eighteenth century Brazil was formed territorially, although later some minor changes occurred. The Brazilians as a people, a racial composite of Europeans, Indians, and Africans, already existed. Indeed, certain basic types—the gaucho, vaqueiro, tropeiro, bandeirante, senhor do engenho—stood out. A distinct psychology characterized the Brazilians. Some Brazilians articulated a desire to alter their relationship with Portugal, a desire from which independence eventually sprang. The first half of the nineteenth century marked a period of somewhat leisurely political change, most notably the evolution from colony to nation, superimposed upon the remarkable continuity of economic...

Undergoing a major political change during the first half of the nineteenth century, Brazil evolved from colony to nation. By stages the elite took control of the government. The coronation of Brazilian-born Pedro II climaxed that process, and he brought tranquillity, order, and stability to the empire. The succeeding decades witnessed economic growth wrought by the expansion of the lucrative coffee industry. The combination of political stability and economic prosperity facilitated the introduction and consideration of new ideas. Those ideas emanating from the capitalist nations admired by the elite helped initiate and propel modernization, a process by which limited groups...

In 1888, a decade of significant changes exploded. The abolition of slavery marked the opening of that decade; the cataclysmic destruction of the folk society at Canudos closed it. The years between witnessed the overthrow of the monarchy, the establishment of a federal republic, the separation of church and state, the entry of the cities and the middle class into politics, the embrace of industrialization as an economic panacea, and an official shift of economic and political power to the southeastern states, in particular the recognition of the importance of São Paulo within that triumivirate. Although these changes occurred historically...

The economy hummed. Talk of change stirred imaginations. One foreign observer of Brazil during the early years of the twentieth century lauded the ʺphenomenal growth and progressʺ in the process of transforming the new South American republic. Marie Robinson Wright remarked further,

The development of an essentially modern spirit of progress and enterprise, which has placed the people of Brazil in the front rank among the leading powers of the New World, and which so dominates the national life at the present moment that every part of the vast republic is responding to its stimulating influence, shows an awakening to...

Gradual change in the twentieth century weakened the base of some archaic institutions long characteristic of Brazil. Emboldened by the modernization process, the critics of the established system intensified their attacks on monoculture, the latifundia, and the entrenched rural oligarchy. A new generation announced its intention to develop the nation—spiritually and materially—in 1922. Getúlio Vargas seized power eight years later and, in the following decade and a half, implemented some of the program the dissidents had favored. The coffee interests lost their absolute control of the nation and the urban middle class and proletariat strengthened their positions. The...

The fall of Vargas in 1945 initiated a period of democratic experiments in Brazil. Impressive economic growth encouraged by a vigorous nationalism accompanied those experiments. The pace of both industrialization and urbanization quickened. That dynamic combination of democratization, nationalism, industrialization, and urbanization created a thrust that for a brief period seemed to propel Brazil toward both political and economic development. Those who drew their power or prestige from institutions fundamentally connected with the past—latifundia, elitist education, social stratification, restricted suffrage—balked at the rapid rate of change. They hoped to retard it. Their opposition strengthened the resolution of the...

Contractual governance collapsed in 1964. The experiment with democracy gave way to military dictatorship. A succession of generals with technocratic advisers prescribed increased investments, capital accumulation at the expense of workersʹ salaries, rapid industrialization, and unquestioned obedience. They solicited foreign loans, accelerated the dependency on exports, and adhered to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund. The governments never hesitated to resort to violence to achieve their goals. During a period of impressive economic growth, from 1969 to 1974, a temporary euphoria disguised the brutality, but by the mid-1970s it became apparent that while solving none of Brazilʹs old problems...