The Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500 on their way to India. On their way to a South route to get to Asia, they acquired a wealth of knowledge about navigation and the geography of the Atlantic Ocean. They relied heavily on the slavery of Africans and the slavery of the Brazilian natives. In the 1690s and 1720s gold and diamonds were discovered. They began to export 30,000 pounds of gold a year to Portugal. People from all over began to come. Painters, sculptors, and carpenters all came to build cities in the wilderness of Brazil.
<em>Europeans arrived in Brazil at the opening of the 16th century (around the 1500s). </em>The first European to claim sovereignty over Indigenous lands part of what is now the territory of the Federative Republic of Brazil on the continent of South America was Pedro Alvares Cabral on April 22, 1500 under the sponsorship of the Kingdom of Portugal.
<em><u>Characteristics of Brazil</u></em>
➡ Brazil was a colony and a part of the Portuguese Empire
➡ The country expanded south along the coast and west along the Amazon and other inland rivers from the original 15 colonies established on the northeast Atlantic coast east of the Tordesillas Line of 1494 that divided the Portuguese domain to the east from the Spanish domain to the west,
➡ The country's borders were really only finalized in the early 20th century (around the 1900s)
