Although King João II of Portugal refused to fund Columbus's voyages, he missed the opportunity to discover America. However, Portugal's seafaring experience since Prince Enrique is far beyond that of European countries, including Spain. So it also occupies a huge share of the craze for Westerners to carve up the American continent. The richness and expanse of Brazil was the greatest prize that the Portuguese had captured in the Americas, and it remained in possession until the 19th century. As we all know, in the 100 years after the beginning of the Age of Discovery, Portugal was gradually surpassed by the Netherlands, England and other rising stars, and from the late 17th century it was reduced to a small and insignificant country in Europe. So how can Portugal, which is small and weak, keep the huge Brazil?
"brasil" (Brazil) was originally the name of a type of mahogany that is a local specialty. Since the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvarez Cabral landed and began to build a colony, this high-quality wood with the ability to extract red fuel has become the colony's largest export. Over time, Europeans began to refer to the colony with this wood, which continues to this day. At first, the Portuguese focused their attention on the East: in order to maintain the best routes to India and China, a lot of manpower and material resources were invested in the African coastline and the core islands of Southeast Asia, and countless fortresses and supply points were set up. As a result, there was little interest in the remote and remote Brazil, where only a small number of whites were stationed to force the natives to cut down mahogany, to do only some resource gathering activities, and to build very little.
It was not until the first half of the 16th century that a group of French colonists landed in Brazil and occupied the Rio Grande Norte region, using it as a base to expand and occupy some of the most important ports along the coast and the surrounding plains. They went on a logging and fishing spree in Brazil, and they actually made a big splash and threatened to squeeze Portugal out of Brazil. At this time, Portugal also had a fairly strong fleet, and its maritime strength was far from being comparable to that of France, a land power, and once it sensed the ambitions of the French team Brazil, it resolutely fought back. The Portuguese used their fleet to cut off the French supply lines by sea, and soon expelled them from Brazil while the latter was unstable, and accelerated the pace of colonization there.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century, although the number of Portuguese settlers in Brazil was still limited, the main coastal ports had established their settlements, and much of the land on the plains had been reclaimed for plantations. However, the Dutch, who were in the ascendant of the day, broke into Brazil and captured important port cities such as Recife. The Dutch fleet was far superior to that of the Portuguese, and it was not so easy for the latter to deal with the Dutch as if they had driven out the French. Fortunately, the Netherlands soon became locked in an all-out war with Great Britain, which challenged it on a global scale because the latter wanted to replace the former's sea supremacy.
Portugal took the opportunity to use marriage and other means to get closer to Britain, fully opened its colonial stronghold to the latter, and joined forces with it to cut off the Dutch route to the Americas. At the same time, with its many years of business accumulation in South America, it continued to attack the Dutch stronghold in Brazil. By about 1652, the Dutch finally had no hold on and gradually withdrew from Brazil, concentrating on the advance of the English. Spain and Portugal were then united, and Spanish colonies in the Americas also tried to expand into Brazil, but were met with fierce resistance from Portuguese descendants in Brazil. Soon Portugal regained its independence status, which was enough to withstand the invasion of Spain and Brazil.
After the eighteenth century, when the colonial competition between Western countries became increasingly fierce, Portugal clung to the thigh of the rising Britain and was willing to be the latter's little brother, which barely managed to maintain the shelf of a huge colonial empire when its own strength was weak. In Brazil, which was dominated by a plantation economy, the economy and livelihood were controlled by the owners of large estates mainly of Portuguese descent, and the ties with the mother country were relatively close, which allowed Portugal to continue its rule here until the 19th century.