Brazil’s Colonial Legacies

While Brazil has been politically independent since 1822, it has been a colony since the early 1500s. This means that Brazil has been much longer under colonial rule than it has been an independent state. The most harmful and lasting legacy of colonialism is undoubtedly slavery. For about 350 years, black Africans were brought to colonial Brazil to work on sugar, cotton and coffee plantations as well as in gold mining. Brazil was probably the largest slave colony in history. It became the last country in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888.