This is a subject I don't know that much about, so sorry if I say something ignorant
I was talking to a Brazilian friend of mine who says that while Brazilians are typically very anti-Portuguese and resentful of colonialism, it was actually not only mostly beneficial, but also inevitable. He says "the most important thing is it's impossible to distinguish or separate Brazil from Portugal till the early 19th century" It literally created Brazil and there is no Brazil without Portugal."
He says that the tupi and other tribal societies at the time were not only cannibalistic and violent (and that to romanticise into peace loving spiritually awakened druids them like Americans do native Americans is folly) but that they were also so primitive that someone was bound to eventually conquer the land in which they lived. If not Portugal then, then someone else 100, 200,300 years from then. He says all people fight each other anyways, but Anglo historical perspectives only repudiate European victories over non Europeans.
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He says the gold paid for the development of the country, otherwise there was no incentive to find new land and expand settlements. He claims that according to cost and profit tables he's read, nobody made much money on African colonialism and it was primarily for prestige and dick measuring, but not so in Brazil. He also says colonialism was BETTER for colonies in an economic sense as colonies had a lot of tariffs imposed on them BECAUSE they would therefore not import shit from elsewhere and had to develop their internal economy and therefore grew economically more percentage wise than even their European owners.
I guess to summarize, he thinks Colonies in the Americas only exist because of European expansionism and colonialism in the first place and whatever land their borders would encompass would otherwise just be something entirely different, so it's not fair to say a country colonized you if it really actually birthed your country to begin with - As a non-native Brazilian, you are the descendant of immigrants and colonial expats anyways. He also thinks that our moral perspective is skewed by modern principles and that ultimately colonialism had a positive impact even in a practical sense.
Is this total bullshit or is he making any kind of sense?
he's right of course. It's not a perspective you would hear in post-modern west so I can understand your suprise
Is all this OBJECTIVELY true, though? Do the facts he mention actually add up - as in, you personally can attest to the veracity of the claims? the specific points he brings up ARE verifiably correct?
yeah it's true. You can trust me
Ok I trust you
The gold rush pretty much created the country through the european immigration that had been minimal the previous centuries, portuguese kings rapidly became worried and passed law after law forbidding portuguese from migrating to the colony to no avail. The entire dynamic is completely the opposite of modern perceptions. Oh and most natives peacefully integrated as caboclos because only the rich could afford to eat european diet and everyone else ate maize and other native crops they grew, some natives were restive but most not (aided in part because diseases had ravaged their population and there hardly was land scarcity) and few portuguese had come from Portugal in the first place at least until the 1700s. By the time of independnce Minas Gerais had something crazy like a third or half the country's population.
I see a lot of Brazilian people online really fricking hate the Portuguese and are always saying we got dominated enslaved etc and to give back their gold. Where can I read more about this?
In their delusional, propagandized minds
The Portuguese built the fricking place, they can take whatever they want
All of the countries in the new world (with perhaps Bolivia as an exception) are made up primarily of the descendants of settlers, this would be like a Hungarian getting angry at central asians for having invaded and settled Panonia, it's moronic.
why Bolivia?
Bolivia is almost entirely filled with indians (natives) with some of the lowest european influence in their demographics, its why they lost every single war they ever fought and are so poor.
>Brazilians are typically very anti-Portuguese and resentful of colonialism
why be resentful of your literal ancestors?
>How reprehensible was the colonization of Brazil?
Literally the standard bearer of miscegenation that is the future of the rest of the world. 100%.
Comparatively speaking, the portugese cokonisation of Brazil benefited the average person living there massively
Both because
A) the environment was so inhospitable there were no great empires, more countless primitive tribes in permanent warfare and with barbaric practicies. Catholicism changed much of this
B) the move of the portugese monarchy from Portugal to Brazil actually made Brazil much more advanced. The king of Brazil forced the end of slavery in opposition of the extremely powerful land owning class who liked slaves for cheap farm Labour.
This actually led to the Brazilians ending the monarchy, but it also meant slavery ended peacefully instead of a civil war like the USA (Brazil ended slavery in 1888, over 20 years after the USA, much longer after Europe and the general end of The Atlantic slave trade)
Without portugese colonisation things would be far worse. Likely Brazil would be a bunch of smaller countries that were colonised by other powers like Spain, France and Britain.
There was basically nothing there. Portuguese built it from the ground up, unlike the Spanish who already had some infrastructure and exploited the natives through the encomienda system. Brazilians are ungrateful morons. Probably carcamanos
Vera Cruz, later Brazil was a settlement, not a colony
The Portuguese were primarily traders and settlers, not colonizers and conquistadors
This post-modern historical revisionism won't work here, sorry
>Brazil was a settlement, not a colony
literally the same thing moron
Colonization lost all meaning and is pretty much synonymous to conquest now
Settlement is a territory in an empty or sparsely populated area, like the land that would become Brazil
A colony disregards who or what is already there
Similar, but not the same
The main problem was over-reliance on slavery.
They literally needed slaves. There was barely anyone there and the Portuguese were few and far between
Imagine making a colony just to import literal millions of Black folks lol