Brazil is one of the most populous countries in the world. By 2022, Brazil has a population of 212 million, ranking sixth in the world. In addition, Brazil is also the largest of the 10 countries and regions in the world that use Portuguese as an official language, and the official status of Portuguese in Brazil is of course related to the history of Brazil as a Portuguese colony. But how many Portuguese descendants are there in Brazil, which uses Portuguese as the Chinese? How many ethnic groups are there in modern Brazil? What is the composition of the various ethnic groups in Brazil?
Brazil's position in the world
Portuguese and other Western Europeans
As we all know, Brazil is located on the American continent, so like other American countries, the earliest inhabitants of this land of Brazil were of course Native Americans. Some modern studies have shown that when the Portuguese first came to Brazil around 1500 AD, there were already about 2.5 million Native Americans living there.
The main ethnic group in modern Brazil
In the decades after the Arrival of the Portuguese in Brazil, there was no large-scale Portuguese migration to Brazil. The Portuguese simply established a series of strongholds along the coast of Brazil called "feitoria", the main role of which was to carry out logging and procurement activities related to the most important economic product of Brazil at that time, that is, Brazil wood (which brazil got its name from).
But soon, colonists from other European countries discovered the secret that the Portuguese were making huge profits in Brazil through Brazilwood, so soon france and the Netherlands began to have people come to Brazil to engage in similar trade. This situation soon aroused the concerns of the Portuguese royal family, so it was decided to truly occupy Brazil and exclude other European colonists from Brazil.
Portuguese immigrants to Brazil in modern times
After this, the Portuguese royal family began to take a series of measures in Brazil, carrying out agricultural activities such as sugarcane cultivation in the local area, which soon attracted a large number of immigrants from the Portuguese mainland, so the earliest immigrants in Brazil were indeed mainly from Portugal. But at the same time that a large number of Portuguese came to Brazil to build sugar plantations, they also brought in a large number of black slaves from Africa to work on the plantations, so Africans also came to Brazil almost at the same time as the Portuguese.
For about 200 years, the Portuguese colonial authorities strictly forbade people from other European countries to immigrate to Brazil, so the early white Brazilians were basically all of Portuguese descent. However, because Portugal had been fighting with Spain for southern Brazil at that time, the local area had fallen under Spanish control for a time, so there were also some Spanish to move to this area. In addition, in the northern region of present-day Brazil, a small number of Dutch people who arrived there early remained in the area.
Europeans who immigrated to Brazil in the 19th century AD
In 1822, Brazil was freed from Portuguese colonial rule and became an independent country. After this, Brazil lifted the ban on non-Portuguese immigrants, and immigrants from other European countries began to enter Brazil in large numbers. However, because the Portuguese had been operating in Brazil for hundreds of years, the local area was very close to the Portuguese mainland to a large extent, so among the immigrants, the Portuguese and other southern European ethnic groups that were very close to the Portuguese language and culture were the most adaptable to the local environment.
An Italian family who immigrated to Brazil
So for almost 100 years after Brazil lifted the European immigration ban, the largest number of immigrants to Brazil was still Portuguese, reaching 1.5 million. But during this period, Italy, also located in southern Europe, became one of Brazil's most important sources of immigration, and modern estimates have estimated that the number of Italians who emigrated to Brazil in the past 100 years or so was about 1.5 million as the Portuguese. In addition, the number of immigrants from Spain and Germany also reached about 700,000 and 250,000 respectively.
Japanese, Middle Eastern and Eastern Europeans
In addition to immigrants from Europe, during this period, because Brazil was open to global immigration, there were also a large number of immigrants from different Asian countries entering Brazil, and the largest number of immigrants was from Japan. The large number of Japanese immigrants entering Brazil is actually a direct result of a huge social change in Brazil.
Painting depicting black Brazilians in the 19th century AD
As we have just mentioned, in addition to the Portuguese, the first immigrant groups to enter Brazil actually had a large number of black slaves transported from Africa by the Portuguese. So early Brazil did also practice slavery for a long time, and black slaves were the main labor force in various plantations in Brazil. But around 1850 AD, this very cruel slavery system was increasingly resisted in the international community, which caused Brazil to suffer many blows in international trade, so the call for the abolition of slavery in Brazil was also getting louder and louder. Finally, in 1888 AD, Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery.
But as we have just said, black slaves were for a long time the main labor force in the plantations of Brazil, and this mode of production did not disappear immediately because of the abolition of slavery. Therefore, after the abolition of the black slave system, Brazil also soon had a shortage of labor, so Brazil soon began to look overseas, hoping to import labor from other countries in the world that could replace black slaves.
And the Italians we mentioned earlier who have entered Brazil in large numbers are actually coming to Brazil in this context. However, since the purpose of Actively Introducing Italian Immigrants in Brazil at that time was to replace black slaves, the vast majority of Italian immigrants arrived in Brazil in a very miserable situation, and their living conditions were not much better than those of black slaves before, so in order to protect their own nationals, the Italian government issued a decree in 1902 prohibiting nationals from re-immigrating to Brazil.
Japanese immigrants from a coffee plantation in Brazil
Against this backdrop, Brazil began to travel to Asia to find alternative sources of labor for slaves. At that time, Japan was in the era of great social changes after the Meiji Restoration, although the Meiji Restoration caused Japan to rise rapidly, but because the long-term feudal system in Japan was completely abandoned, so the changes in these decades produced a large number of rural poor people without livelihood in Japan, and at that time, Japan's emerging urban economy could not provide full employment for these people, so there was a large number of surplus labor in Japan.
At this time, Brazil wanted to get rid of the burden, so the two sides hit it off, which contributed to the history of a large number of Japanese immigrants moving to Brazil. In the early decades of the 20th century, the number of Japanese emigrating to Brazil also reached about 170,000. But we have made it very clear that The introduction of Japanese immigrants in Brazil at this time is also to replace black slaves, so although these people are nominally indentured laborers, not slaves, in fact, the situation of these Japanese immigrants in Brazil is not much better than that of black slaves, so it can be said that the early Japanese immigrants in Brazil are also a history of suffering, and the situation of Chinese workers in the United States is not much different.
Syrian bazaar in São Paulo, Brazil
In addition to this period, a considerable number of Arabs and Eastern Europeans also emigrated to Brazil. The Arabs who immigrated to Brazil were mainly from today's Lebanon and Syria, which were under Ottoman rule at the time, but the Ottoman Empire was already on the verge of collapse, so the domestic situation was extremely chaotic. Against this backdrop, a significant number of Arabs living in Lebanon and Syria have emigrated to Brazil. Similar to the situation for the Arabs are Eastern European immigrants from Poland and Ukraine. At that time, eastern Poland and western Ukraine were under the rule of the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, respectively, and both empires experienced significant decline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so many Poles from Russian Poland and Ukrainians from Austrian Ukraine were forced to leave their homes and go to Brazil to make a living. Both groups also have about 100,000 people.
Demographic composition of modern Brazil
And these immigrants from Eurasian countries, coupled with the descendants of black slaves who also entered Brazil in large numbers of years before, constitute the basic pattern of the Brazilian population, so are these modern peoples the main ethnic groups in Brazil? Is the largest ethnic group in Brazil the Portuguese? The answer is no.
Croatian descendants of Brazil
What we want to make clear here is that among the white people in modern Brazil, the Portuguese descendants are indeed the largest group. Many statistics show that Brazil is the most populous country in the world with Portuguese ancestry, even more than Portugal itself (population 10.31 million). However, the main era of immigration in Brazil ended around the 1950s AD, and most Portuguese immigrants entered Brazil even before the 20th century, and Brazil is a country where inter-ethnic and even inter-racial marriage is very common, so modern Brazil only has Portuguese descendants, not The Portuguese nation.
American-Southern descendants of Brazil
The same is true for other European ethnic groups, and in Brazil today, although there are some European ethnic groups with relatively low mixed races, and some ethnic groups have their own communities, especially those originating in Japan, Germany and Eastern Europe, their number is almost negligible among brazil's 200 million people. The vast majority of Brazilians can be said to be mixed races, so in the current Brazil, there is almost no ethnic group according to the country of origin, and the current ethnic division is almost always distinguished by different mixed races.
Descendants of the Netherlands in Brazil
According to this criterion, Brazil currently has five major ethnic groups, namely white, multi-ethnic, black, yellow (referring to Asians, which in Brazil is indeed called yellow) and Native Americans. Among them, the largest ethnic group in Brazil is still white, that is, a white ethnic group formed by the mixed blood of the descendants of immigrants from various European countries. This ethnic group accounts for about 47.5% of Brazil's total population. The second largest ethnic group in Brazil is multi-ethnic, that is, mixed race, which is not much different from the total number of whites, accounting for about 43.5% of brazil's total population. In addition, blacks make up about 7.5 percent of Brazil's population, and yellows make up about 1.1 percent (about 2 million Japanese and 250,000 Chinese). Brazil's earliest inhabitants, native Americans, currently account for only about 0.4% of Brazil's total population.
Descendants of Japanese descent in Brazil
Of course, within each large group, there will also be some more detailed divisions based on skin color differences caused by different degrees of mixed race, such as blonde groups and brown skin color groups representing different shades. There will also be some informal ethnic divisions of countries, but none of these figures have been adopted by Brazilian officials. Moreover, these numbers are divided into different standards, and many times contradict each other. For example, many people think that the Portuguese Brazilians, who should be the largest ethnic group in Brazil, are only about 5 million people in some common figures because of statistical standards, accounting for only 2.5% of the Brazilian population.
Of Hungarian descent in Brazil
So in Brazil, what people usually call ethnic affiliation is the five categories we mentioned above, and this way is indeed the division that is most in line with the reality of Brazilian society. Because although the ancestral home or country of origin of most Brazilians can be determined through modern DNA research, because most Brazilians have different mixed races (at least 61% of the younger generation of Japanese descent with the least mixed blood are also of mixed race), their ancestral home is of little significance to their national affiliation indicators.
Modern Brazilians
For example, according to some DNA studies, in Brazil, 50% of the paternal genes are from Europe, while only 48% of the paternal genes from black Africa are from Black Africa. In Brazil, about 2 percent of the population classified as white also has paternal genes from black Africa. Within the same ethnic group, the vast majority of Brazilians are you and I have you, and ethnic divisions according to their country of origin have largely lost their significance. Therefore, it can be said that the mixed ethnic group with European ancestry as the main body and mixed with different other bloodlines can be said to be the real main ethnic group in Brazil. (The picture is from the Internet, and the copyright of the picture belongs to its original author)