The first shipment of Africans into the British settlements in Virginia was in 1619. Eventually 400,000 slaves were brought to North America. In the North, slavery existed prior to the American Revolution but it was not central to the economy. However, in the agrarian South, the raising of staple crops on plantations - tobacco, sugar, rice, and much later, cotton - was performed by slaves. In both the U.S. and Brazil, plantations were located in the warmer climates - nearer the equator. Thus, in the U.S., the Southern states were agrarian; the plantation system in Brazil developed north of Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil's colonization was strongly influenced by the Catholic Church. In the 16th century, the Catholic Church underwent the Counter Reformation which arose largely in answer to the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Counter Reformation sought to raise the spiritual tone of the European Catholic countries. Worship was standardized and the life of the clergy was scrutinized. The newly formed Society of Jesus (Jesuits) established missions throughout Brazil. It was in the spirit of the Catholic Counter Reformation that missionaries worked strenuously for the conversion of the Indians. Tupi, the language spoken by most of the Indians along the Brazilian coast, was adapted by missionaries for teaching the catechism. From this language have come words used in English such as tapioca (a by-product of manioc) and cashew (acajú in Tupi).

Brazil 16th Century Map

Brazil was in part colonized as an ideal Catholic world. The British colonies - many of whose early settlers sought only the freedom to think and worship as they pleased - were in part colonized as an ideal Protestant world. These two religious forces determined many of the differences between the two countries. In Brazil, Catholicism ceased to be the official religion after the proclamation of the Republic in 1889, although the predominance of Latins among the immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries has maintained the supremacy of the Catholic religion. In 1791, the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States proclaimed that there be no established religion in the U.S. The majority of U.S. citizens are Protestants.

The fertile lands and economic assets of both colonies were envied by other European countries. The French, and later the Dutch, established colonies in Brazil and America. The French began arriving in Brazil in the 16th century, founding in 1612 the Northeast city of São Luis, named after the French King. They were expelled by the Portuguese in 1615. French Huguenots first settled in North Carolina in 1562. They continued exploring along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and founded New Orleans in 1718.

The Dutch invaded Brazil and held its sugarcane-growing belt in the Northeast from 1630 to 1654. In North America, the Dutch established fur-trading posts along the Hudson River culminating in the purchase of Manhattan Island from its Indian inhabitants in 1626. The English seized the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1664, whereupon it was renamed New York.

When the Dutch were expelled from Brazil by the Portuguese, religious persecution returned and a small community of Jews living in Recife left. In September 1654, twenty-three Brazilian Jews settled in New Amsterdam. They were the first Jews to settle in North America. The following year they founded their synagogue - Remnant of Israel (Shearith Israel) - the first synagogue in North America.

Western expansion was a major factor in the development of both countries. In Brazil, Western expansion started as early as the mid 1600s when expeditions known as Bandeiras (literally Flags after the banners borne at their heads) departed from their home base in São Paulo looking for minerals. they cut their way through forests, crossed powerful rivers, and explored the vastness of the inland plateau. Circumstances would sometimes force a Bandeira to camp for months and some of their number would choose to remain on the spot. Those who remained founded many of Brazil's interior cities. More importantly, though, these explorations extended, without any conscious plan or design, the Western boundaries of the future independent Brazil. In the United States the push to the West began later. It started in the second decade of the 1800s and lasted until 1914.