Tiradentes
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Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes, was a leading member of the colonial Brazilian revolutionary movement known as Inconfidência Mineira, whose aim was full independence from Portuguese colonial rule and creation of a republic. When the separatists' plot was uncovered by authorities, Tiradentes was arrested, tried and publicly hanged.
Tiradentes in uniform of alferes, by José Wasth Rodrigues (1940). No contemporary portraits or physical descriptions of Tiradentes are known
Ruins of the Fazenda do Pombal, in the present municipality of Ritápolis.
Statue of Tiradentes, patron of the military police in Minas Gerais.
Sentence pronounced against Tiradentes, 1792.
Colonial Brazil
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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.
The brazilwood tree, which gives Brazil its name, has dark, valuable wood and provides red dye
Historical centre of Salvador in 2007 – the architecture of the city's historic centre is typically Portuguese.
17th-century Jesuit church in São Pedro da Aldeia, near Rio de Janeiro
View of a sugar-producing farm (engenho) in colonial Pernambuco by Dutch painter Frans Post (17th century)