Major Nations in a Global World: Brazil

brought over by the Europeans. Many natives fled inland to escape the horrors of the plantations. Eventually the Por- tuguese replaced the native slaves with slaves from Africa. Portugal would rule Brazil for more than 300 years, imbuing the country with its language and its religion—Catholicism. Although few Portuguese traveled inland, Jesuit missionaries, whose mission was to Domingos Jorge Velho, a famous bandeirante , in a painting by Benedito Calixto (1902).

“save” the souls of the natives, traveled well beyond the coast converting the Indi- ans to Christianity. That is why most Brazilians today are Roman Catholic. In fact, Brazil has one of the largest Roman Catholic populations in the world. Still, Brazil- ians practice a variety of religions, including Buddhism, Judaism, and candomblé, a form of Catholicism practiced by Brazilians of African descent. The priests were not the only ones moving into Brazil’s interior. Also mov- ing inland were the much-feared bandeirantes , a group of fortune hunters and explorers who searched for resources to exploit and people to enslave. Some 200 years after Cabral arrived in Brazil, groups of bandeirantes traveled to the rugged mountain ranges west of Rio de Janeiro and found gold. The Brazilian gold rush was on and Brazil’s population boomed. Settlers moved away from the coast and thousands of Portuguese set sail from the mother country. New settlements sprung up in the gold-rich inland areas of Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, and Mato Grosso do Sul. In response, the Portuguese government ordered that miners had to pay the crown one-fifth of all gold taken from Brazil. The gold, and later diamonds and other gems, allowed the financially strapped Portuguese government to pay off its considerable debts after wars with Spain and the Netherlands sank the country in a mountain of debt. Brazilian miners exported about 30,000 pounds of gold a year to Portugal. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, all the gold that could be found was harvested.

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MAJOR NATIONS IN A GLOBAL WORLD: BRAZIL