The official language of the Brazil is the Portuguese while almost all the rest of theLatin America speaks Spanishthe reason must be sought in complex historical dynamics, international agreements and colonialisms that date back to the very first times of European explorations: the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 assigned the territories to the east to Portugal. After the discovery of Brazil in 1500, a colonization began that made Portuguese the official language of Brazil even after independence from Portugal. In reality, over time the Brazilian Portuguese has developed some characteristics that distinguish it from the European Portuguese, making it a distinct variant of this language.
The great discoveries and the race to the new world
We will need to start from the end of the fifteenth century, when the ferment of the discovery of the New World. The fruitful expedition of Cristoforo Colombo had unleashed A race to unknown lands between the two main maritime powers of the time: the Spain and the Portugalboth lust to secure new lands to colonize, new commercial routes and precious resources. For this reason, to avoid a direct confrontation, it was necessary to find a formal agreement.
It was the 1494and thanks to the mediation of Pope Alexander VI, The Treaty of Tordesillas by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile for Spain, and Giovanni II of Portugal for Portugal. According to this agreement, An imaginary line traced to 370 alloys west of the islands of Capo Verde divided the world between Spain and Portugal: everything found west of the line would have been to Spanish domainwhat was a east he would have been up to the Portuguese. This line, which theoretically should have cut the Atlantic Ocean, was however traced without precise knowledge of the geographies of the new world, and the consequence was the general discontentInstead of the ausposed peace. Spain suspected that the line was too close to the African coasts and feared that Portugal was gaining too much; Portugal thought that the line did not guarantee quite territories to colonize in the future.
The “discovery” of Brazil and Portuguese colonization
In the 1500the Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral He sailed to the Indies, but deviating the route randomly landed on the current coast Brazilnear today’s Porto Seguro. Since the touched lands were east of the Tordesillas line, Portugal immediately claimed the territory. From there began a long and systematic work of colonization: the foundation of settlements, the creation of hereditary captains, the spread of the Portuguese language and the Christianization of the indigenous population.
In the first twenty years after the discovery, however, Portugal showed little interest in Brazil, as attention was concentrated on Commercial routes of the Indian Ocean (spices, gold, silk). In this phase, in fact, significant permanent settlements were not created, and only a timber trade developed, with sporadic shipments. However, the danger of French incursions He pushed King John III of Portugal to intervene more decisively. While Brazil remained under Portuguese control, The rest of South America (with the exception of some areas such as the Guiana) it was progressively colonized by Spainwhose colonial system was based on a more rigid and centralized structure: i viceroy they managed large administrative regions, such as the Vicerame of the New Spain (Mexico) or del Peru.
Portugal, on the other hand, maintained a more decentralized colonization initially, with large powers to local governors, however from a linguistic point of view it behaved differently: The Portuguese became a unique languagewhile in the Spanish colonies the indigenous populations preserved many local languages next to the Spaniard.
The expansion of Brazil and the new treaties
Over time, the Portuguese settlers began to push themselves well beyond the boundaries originally established by the Treaty of Tordesillas: i Banderantesexplorers and slave hunters, penetrated in the interior of South America, moving the actual border of Brazil towards west. This process culminated in the Madrid Treaty of 1750, which redefined the colonial borders according to the principle ofUTO POBRIFTIS (“Who owns, owns”): he soon sanctioned that the territories already occupied would have remained under the control of their respective colonizers. Brazil thus acquired the vast territory that we know today, well beyond the imaginary line of Tudesillas. Brazil obtained Independence in 1822in a relatively peaceful way compared to the violent revolutions that shook the Spanish colonies. The Portuguese rest The official language of the new state, obviously with its own linguistic variants with respect to the European Portuguese, also strengthened by the strong Lusofona cultural identity which had developed over the centuries of colonial domination.
