Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Haywood
Why is Brazil so large?
There were loads of Spanish colonies, but they often remained isolated from metropole and each other, and they fragmented and grew in lots of directions and we end up with many nations. But only one Brazil. How did you make such a big, cohesive colony that has held together so strongly?
major part of it was the treaty of tordesillas that estabilished that all the land outside Europe should be an exclusive duopoly between Portugal and Spain.
also in pre-colombian south america, there were more diferent cultures and peoples in the "spanish part" than in the portuguese.
in Brazil, Dom Pedro I, son of the portuguese king Dom João VI, proclaimed the country's independence in 1822 and became brazil's first emperor.
although Bolivar attempted to unify politically the spanish-speaking parts of the continent into the "Gran Colombia", they rapidly became independent states without political connections between them, despite some later attempts such as the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation.