Albert Eckhout: a mameluco woman in Brazil, c. 1641–1644
Mameluco is a Portuguese word that denotes the first generation child of a European and an Amerindian. It corresponds to the Spanish word mestizo.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, mameluco was also used to refer to organized bands of explorers from Colonial Brazil known as bandeirantes, who roamed the interior of South America departing from São Paulo near the Atlantic Ocean to the interior of Brazil and Paraguay, invading Guarani settlements in search of slaves and gold.
The word may have become common in Portugal in the Middle Ages, deriving from the Arabic, "Mamluk", "slave", commonly referring to soldiers and rulers of slave origin, especially in Egypt.
The Tupi people, a subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, were one of the largest groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 years ago the Tupi started to migrate southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast of Southeast Brazil.
Colonial Brazil comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal. During the 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the main economic activities of the territory were based first on brazilwood extraction, which gave the territory its name; sugar production ; and finally on gold and diamond mining. Slaves, especially those brought from Africa, provided most of the workforce of the Brazilian export economy after a brief initial period of Indigenous slavery to cut brazilwood.
Zambo or Sambu is a racial term historically used in the Spanish Empire to refer to people of mixed Amerindian and African ancestry. Occasionally in the 21st century, the term is used in the Americas to refer to persons who are of mixed African and Indigenous American ancestry.
A quilombo is a Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by people of African origin, and others sometimes called Carabali. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos, called quilombolas, were maroons, a term for escaped slaves.
The bandeirantes were slavers, explorers, adventurers, and fortune hunters in early Colonial Brazil. They are largely responsible for Brazil's great expansion westward, far beyond the Tordesillas Line of 1494, by which Pope Alexander VI divided the new continent into a western, Castilian section, and an eastern, Portuguese section.
Afro-Brazilians are Brazilians who have predominantly sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most members of another group of people, multiracial Brazilians or pardos, may also have a range of degree of African ancestry. Depending on the circumstances, the ones whose African features are more evident are always or frequently seen by others as "africans" - consequently identifying themselves as such, while the ones for whom this evidence is lesser may not be seen as such as regularly. It is important to note that the term pardo, such as preto, is rarely used outside the census spectrum. Brazilian society has a range of words, including negro itself, to describe multiracial people.
Guinea is a traditional name for the region of the African coast of West Africa which lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It is a naturally moist tropical forest or savanna that stretches along the coast and borders the Sahel belt in the north.
The Second Battle of Guararapes was the second and decisive battle in a conflict called the Insurrection of Pernambuco, between Dutch and Portuguese forces in February 1649 at Jaboatão dos Guararapes in Pernambuco. The defeat convinced the Dutch "that the Portuguese were formidable opponents, something which they had hitherto refused to concede." The Dutch still retained a presence in Brazil until 1654 and a treaty was signed in 1661.
Palmares, or Quilombo dos Palmares, was a quilombo, a community of escaped slaves and others, in colonial Brazil that developed from 1605 until its suppression in 1694. It was located in the captaincy of Pernambuco, in what is today the Brazilian state of Alagoas. The quilombo was located in what is now the municipality of União dos Palmares.
Sarapatel, or Sorpotel, is a dish of Portuguese origin now commonly cooked in the Konkan—primarily Goa, Mangalore, and Bombay—the erstwhile Estado da Índia Portuguesa colony. It is also prepared in northeastern Brazil. The word ‘Sarapatel’ literally means confusion, referring to the mish-mash of ingredients which include Pork meat and offal. However, in modern-day version, blood is rarely used as now getting the pure blood is slightly difficult. The meat is first parboiled, then diced and sauteed before being cooked in a spicy and vinegary sauce.
A caboclo is a person of mixed Indigenous Brazilian and European ancestry, or, less commonly, a culturally assimilated or detribalized person of full Amerindian descent. In Brazil, a caboclo generally refers to this specific type of mestiço.
Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement. Later, colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions of bandeirantes. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries. Europeans and Chinese were also enslaved.
Mestiço is a Portuguese term that referred to persons born from a couple in which one was an aboriginal person and the other a European.
The colonial history of Angola is usually considered to run from the appearance of the Portuguese under Diogo Cão in 1482 (Congo) or 1484 until the independence of Angola in November 1975. Settlement did not begin until Novais's establishment of São Paulo de Loanda (Luanda) in 1575, however, and the Portuguese government only formally incorporated Angola as a colony in 1655 or on May 12, 1886.
Brazilian censuses do not use a "multiracial" category. Instead, the censuses use skin colour categories. Most Brazilians of visibly mixed racial origins self-identify as pardos. However, many White Brazilians have distant non-white ancestry, while the group known as pardos likely contains acculturated Amerindians. According to the 2010 census, "pardos" make up 82.277 million people or 43.13% of Brazil's population.
The Cabanagem was a popular revolution and pro-separatist movement that occurred in the then province of Grão-Pará, Empire of Brazil.
Albert Eckhout (c.1610–1665) was a Dutch portrait and still life painter. Eckhout, the son of Albert Eckhourt and Marryen Roeleffs, was born in Groningen, but his training as an artist and early career are unknown. A majority of the works attributed to him are unsigned. He was among the first European artists to paint scenes from the New World. He was in the entourage of the Dutch governor-general of Brazil, Johan Maurits, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, who took him and fellow painter Frans Post to Dutch Brazil to have them record the country's landscape, inhabitants, flora and fauna. Eckhout is also famous for his still-life paintings of Brazilian fruits and vegetables. His paintings were intended for decoration in a domestic context.
The casa-grande was the Brazilian equivalent of a Southern plantation in the United States. These casas-grandes were predominantly located in the northeast of Brazil. Additionally, sugar cane was grown in the interior, in the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
João Ramalho (1493–1582) was a Portuguese explorer and adventurer known as the first bandeirante. He lived much of his life among Tupiniquim natives in Brazil after he arrived there in 1515. He even became the leader of an Indian village after he developed a friendship with Tibiriçá, an important native chief at the time. Ramalho played an important role in the pacific interaction between the Portuguese and the natives, especially after the arrival of Martim Afonso de Sousa, with whom he became friends after meeting him in São Vicente, the first Portuguese settlement in the Americas. Some historians agree that his ancestors were Jews from Covilhã.
The Netto Question was the largest collective action for the liberation of slaves in the Americas. The lawsuit is related to the liberation of 217 slaves in Brazilian lands in the 1870s.
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