Brazil During and

After Colonialism
Explain two ways in which Brazil was shaped by the era of slavery and
colonialism. (Explain means “to make plain or understandable; to give
reasons for or causes of; to show the logical development or
relationships of.”
Vocabulary
• Bias-prejudice in favor of or against one thing,
person, or group compared with another, usually
in a way considered to be unfair.
Document 1: Number of slaves brought to Brazil
from Africa
“As to how many slaves entered Brazil there is an estimate from a
famous historian (Taunay) who calculated in 3,600,000 African slaves
arrived in Brazil. He distributed by centuries: 100,000 in the 16th
century, 600,000 in the 17th century, 1,300,000 in the 18th century,
and 1,600,000 in the 19th century.”

--from UNESCO:Memory of the World Projects

portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=18737...
Document 2
Distribution of African slaves imported to the Americas & the Caribbean
(approximately 10 million total):
British North America 4.5%
Spanish Colonies in Latin America & the 15%
Caribbean
Caribbean Islands (French, Dutch, British) 41%
Brazil (Portuguese) 37% (almost 4 million people)
Europe and Asia 2.5%
Document 3: Today’s Numbers: People of
African Descent in the Americas
• Afro-Latin American- There are an estimated 100 million people of
African descent living in Latin America, the bulk of whom are 80
million Afro-Brazilians who make up 45 % of Brazil’s population.
There are also sizeable African populations in the former Spanish
colonies of Cuba, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
Document 4: The Columbian Exchange (left, #6A)
& the “Triangular Trade” (right, #6B) between
Europe, Africa, & the Americas
Document 5: Cultural Diffusion in Religion—
Catholicism (left) and Cultural Diffusion (right)
 Documents 6A & 6B: The indigenous
population in Brazil
A In 1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet, which was en route to India, landed at Porto Seguro in what is now the state of Bahia. The territory
that comprises modern Brazil had a native population in the millions, divided among hundreds of tribes and language groups. Their
ancestors had lived in this land for as long as 30,000 years. There is no way to be certain of the exact size of the population or its
distribution. Many areas that were inhabited in 1500 were later stripped bare by epidemics or slave hunters. But scholars have attempted
to make estimates based on contemporary reports and the supposed carrying capacity of the land. For Brazil's Amazon Basin alone,
demographer William M. Denevan has suggested 3,625,000 people, with another 4,800,000 in other regions. Other estimates place 5
million inhabitants in Amazônia alone. More conservatively, British historian John Hemming estimated 2,431,000 people for Brazil as a
whole. These figures are based on known tribes, although many unknown ones probably died out in the devastating epidemics of the
colonial era. source: http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-1690.html
B
Indigenous peoples in Brazil today
Approximately 519,000 Indigenous Brazilians
0.4% of Brazil's population
sources: http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/, http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/35305