Brazil’s Geography

The per capita income is $4,820; these numbers are quite typical for a Latin American country. (3) The Economy During the Pre-Colonial Period European colonialism basically developed the economy in Brazil. The territory that comprises modern Brazil had a native population in the millions, divided among hundreds of tribes and language groups. Their ancestors have lived in this land for as long as 30,000 years. The Indians spoke languages that scholars have classified into four families: the Gê speakers, originally spread along the coast and into the central plateau and scrub lands; the Tupí speakers, who displaced the Gê on the coast and hence were the first met by the Portuguese; the Carib speakers in the north and in Amazônia, who were related distantly to the people who gave their name to the Caribbean;... ... middle of paper ... ...rently involved in a war and is in an economic recession.

Only during the 19th century, it spread widely throughout the tropical world. Currently, it is cultivated in tropical and subtropical zones, between latitudes 30⁰ North and 15⁰ South. The main areas of distribution of the crop include the Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, West Indies), Central and South America; USA (Florida, Hawaii), West Africa (Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo), and tropical Asia ( Indonesia, Malaysia, the South Pacific Islands) (Perez, 2010). Tannia was introduced between the 16th and 17th centuries to Central and West Africa, where it was given the common name of cocoyam because of its resemblance to Colocasia. It was brought by Portuguese slavers into SaoTomé and Principe, where they had important trading bases and was spread further by traders, missionaries and other travelers (Bown, 2000; George, 2011).

Jesuit missions largely converted the indigenous to the Catholic faith. However, due to the effects of European diseases African slaves began to become the main source of labor. Eventually, the economy was dominated by the export of sugar from the 16th to the 19th centuries. When Napoleon invaded Portugal during the Napoleonic Wars, the Portuguese monarchy moved to Brazil and elevated the colony’s status to a kingdom. By 1822, Brazil declared its independence under Pedro I and fought a very short war with Portugal.

Along with other factors such as Dutch expansion and a great demand for sugar in Europe, suga... ... middle of paper ... ...have a sugar revolution, what occurred in the Caribbean and in Brazil was simply a sugar boom. Work Sited Book Davis, Ralph. The Rise of the Atlantic Economies Cox & Wyman Ltd 1973 London Eiensberg, Peter L. The Sugar Industry in Pernambuco 1840-1910 Modernization without Change University of California Press, Berkeley, 1974 Los Angeles, London Greenwood, Robert,Hamber, S, Dyde, Brian. Amerindians to Africans 3rd Edition Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 2008 London McCusker, John, J. Morgan, Kenneth. The Early Modern Atlantic Economy Cambridge University Press, 2000, USA Menard, Russell.

Cassava has high dry weight proportion, between 30% and 40%, and starch and sugar make up 90% of the dry matter (Cock 1958). Cassava is relatively rich in calcium and ascorbic acid (vitamin c) and contains significant quantities of thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin (Jones 1959). Diets, which consist mainly of cassava, may lea... ... middle of paper ... ... by Portuguese trades migrating between Brazil and the West African coast. Evidence reveals that cassava was introduced as early as the 1588 to the Congo. The Portuguese brought cassava from Brazil to their trading stations along the coast from present day Ghana to Somalia (Jones 1959).

Latex is thought to be a defense against insect predators for the tree. (1) Hevea brasiliensis was first found in the Amazon basin. The rubber trade became a mainstay of the Brazilian economy, providing at its height almost 40 % of its export revenues. It was not long before the idea was conceived of domesticating rubber. However, Brazil was not the site of the successful commercialization of rubber.

Portugal discovered and colonized the land in the 1500's by military leader Pedro Cabral. Throughout the history of Portuguese colonization, 3.5 million slaves were brought to the country for plantation labor. During global crisis in the 17th and 18th century, immigrants from Portugal and Asia arrived to Brazil. After the independence of Portugal in 1822, Brazil was considered to have one of the most diverse nation with the combination of indigenous, African, European, Asian culture . Till this day, Brazil multi-cultural background remains the same.

Portuguese settlers developed vast sugarcane estates in the Bahia region, and for 150 years these estates were in the world’s main source of sugar. To work the estates, the owners used salves from Africa. Today there is still an African tradition in Brazil. Modern immigration began early in the 19th century. Only about 4.5 million foreigners, mostly from Europe, settled in Brazil after then.

This region made the production easy because it was a very fertile growing ground for the sugar, the earth’s most profitable product at this time. At first the Indians were used to work in the sugar fields but the Portuguese soon found out that the Indians were not going to meet their needs. So the Portuguese turned to slavery in the 1500’s to meet the high demand for human labor. As the demand for sugar exploded, the number of slaves in Brazil exploded also, making Brazil have one of the largest slave populations in the world. For three more centuries after this Europeans transported Africans they captured to Brazil to work in the sugar production industry.

The plantation systems in the Caribbean were its most distinctive and characteristic economic form. These plantation systems were created in the New World during the early years of the sixteenth century and were mostly staffed with slaves imported from Africa. It was Spain that pioneered sugar cane, sugar making, African slave labour, and the plantation form in the Caribbean. Before long, within a century, the French and British became the world’s greatest makers and exporters of sugar. The film, Sugar Cane Alley, depicts the essence of a key transitional moment in French Caribbean history.