The Imperial Brazilian Navy was the navy created at the time of the independence of the Empire of Brazil from the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. It existed between 1822 and 1889 during the vacancy of the constitutional monarchy.
Officers of the Armada. Seated, Prince August (left) and Admiral Eduardo Wandenkolk (center), 1889.
Prince Regent Pedro (right) orders the Portuguese officer Jorge de Avilez (left) to return to Portugal after his failed rebellion.
The Pedro I ship that took part in the Brazilian War of Independence.
Training of the Armada during the 1870s.
The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and Uruguay until the latter achieved independence in 1828. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Pedro I and his son Pedro II. A colony of the Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil became the seat of the Portuguese Empire in 1808, when the Portuguese Prince regent, later King Dom John VI, fled from Napoleon's invasion of Portugal and established himself and his government in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. John VI later returned to Portugal, leaving his eldest son and heir-apparent, Pedro, to rule the Kingdom of Brazil as regent. On 7 September 1822, Pedro declared the independence of Brazil and, after waging a successful war against his father's kingdom, was acclaimed on 12 October as Pedro I, the first Emperor of Brazil. The new country was huge, sparsely populated, and ethnically diverse.
A locomotive in Bahia province (Brazilian northeast), c. 1859
Brazilian artillery in position during the Paraguayan War, 1866
Emperor Pedro II surrounded by prominent politicians and national figures c. 1875
Belém, a medium-sized city and capital of Pará province (Brazilian north), 1889