Discovering South America: Brazil

A Legacy of Inequality 21

territory, and countless more slaves were brought from Africa to dig—and die—in the mines. In 1763 the Portuguese king moved the colonial capital from Salvador to the booming city of Rio de Janeiro. Its location on the coast offered the per- fect entry and exit point for colonists, slaves, gold, and goods. The link between Portugal and Brazil was broken when France invaded Portugal in 1807. Two days before the invasion, the Portuguese prince regent (a ruler governing in place of an absent or disabled monarch—in this case, the queen, who was insane) set sail for Brazil. Soon after arriving, the prince regent (later to become King João VI) made Rio de Janeiro the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarve (a Moorish kingdom conquered in the 13th century and incorporated into Portugal). On September 7, 1822, João VI’s son Pedro proclaimed Brazil’s indepen- dence from Portugal. He had himself crowned the nation’s first emperor on October 22. The greatest challenge facing Emperor Pedro I was to keep his giant new nation from splintering into several countries, as had happened to the Spanish holdings in Central and South America. Unfortunately, in the 1820s Pedro chose to fight Argentina over the southern border of Brazil. The struggle erupted into the Cisplatine War (1825–28). The war was unpopular with many Brazilians, especially after Brazil suffered a major military defeat at the hands of the Argentines in 1827. Pedro abdicated, or renounced, his Brazilian throne in 1831 and returned to Portugal. By then Brazil had the largest slave population in the world, numbering several million. Although the slave trade was abolished in 1850, slavery remained legal in Brazil longer than in any other society in the Americas.