Empire of Brazil

The Empire of Brazil was a monarchy that ruled Brazil from independence in 1822 until a military coup established a republic in 1889. It was the only lasting monarchy in the Americas in the nineteenth century, and under its second emperor, Pedro II, Brazil was one of the most stable countries in Latin America.

When Napoleon invaded Portugal in 1807, the royal family fled to Rio de Janeiro, which became the capital of the Portuguese empire. In 1821, after a revolution in Portugal, King John VI returned to Lisbon, leaving his son Pedro as regent. The Portuguese parliament tried to restore Brazil's colonial status and ordered Pedro home. On 9 January 1822, Pedro declared that he would stay, the "Dia do Fico", and on 7 September 1822, by the Ipiranga stream near São Paulo, he declared independence with the cry "Independence or death!". He was crowned Emperor Pedro I in December. Portuguese troops in Bahia and the north fought until 1823, and Portugal recognised independence in 1825.

Pedro I granted a constitution in 1824, creating a parliamentary monarchy with a "moderating power" for the emperor, and a Catholic state church. His reign was troubled. A republican revolt, the Confederation of the Equator, broke out in Pernambuco in 1824. Brazil lost the war over the Cisplatine province, which became independent as Uruguay in 1828. Pedro's affair with the Marchioness of Santos and his authoritarian style made him unpopular. In 1831 he abdicated in favour of his five-year-old son and returned to Portugal, where he fought for his daughter's claim to the Portuguese throne.

During the regency, from 1831 to 1840, provincial revolts broke out across Brazil: the Cabanagem in Pará, where tens of thousands died; the Sabinada in Bahia; the Balaiada in Maranhão; and the Ragamuffin War, the Farroupilha, in Rio Grande do Sul, which lasted ten years. The Malê revolt of 1835 in Salvador was an uprising of enslaved African Muslims. To restore order, Pedro II was declared of age in 1840, at fourteen.

Pedro II reigned for nearly fifty years. A scholar who spoke many languages, he corresponded with scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Charles Darwin, supported the arts and sciences and travelled widely. He governed as a constitutional monarch, alternating Liberal and Conservative governments. Under his rule, Brazil grew rich on coffee, grown in the Paraíba valley and later São Paulo; built railways and telegraph lines; and encouraged European immigration.

From 1864 to 1870, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay fought Paraguay, led by Francisco Solano López, in the War of the Triple Alliance, the bloodiest war in South American history. Paraguay lost perhaps more than half its population. The war strengthened the Brazilian army, many of whose soldiers were formerly enslaved men, and its officers became politically ambitious.

Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Under British pressure, the slave trade was banned in 1850. The Law of the Free Womb of 1871 freed children born to enslaved mothers, and the Sexagenarian Law of 1885 freed slaves over sixty. Abolitionists, such as Joaquim Nabuco, André Rebouças and José do Patrocínio, campaigned, and enslaved people fled plantations in large numbers. On 13 May 1888, Princess Isabel, acting as regent, signed the Golden Law, abolishing slavery without compensation to owners.

Many planters, angered by abolition, turned against the monarchy. Republican ideas spread among the military and the urban middle class, and the emperor was old and ill, with an unpopular heir, Isabel, married to a French prince. On 15 November 1889, a military coup led by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca proclaimed the republic. The imperial family went into exile in Europe; Pedro II died in Paris in 1891.

Our maps show the Empire of Brazil on the 1878 and 1880 maps, with an outline of about 8 million square kilometres, almost exactly modern Brazil. Rio de Janeiro and Salvador lie inside it. Before it, our maps show Colonial Brazil; from 1900, Brazil.