Today Brazil is the 5th largest country by Area in the world. I have been passively researching colonization and decolonization in the Americas as I find the time period very interesting, but I have a question as to why it ended up as it is today, with Brazil remaining united despite 9 Spanish speaking countries emerging over time. Did this have anything to do with the Treaty of Tordesillas? Was Brazil always more likely to stick together? In addition, what caused the Spanish colonies to go their seperate ways when they were, for the most part, all under the Viceroyalty of Peru while under Spanish rule?
Thank you in advance for your responses.
I would say there are three main reasons:
The first is that the Spanish colonies fought long wars against Spain, wars that were led by different commanders in the Americas (while Simon Bolivar was the leader of the South American independence movement, he had very little direct influence on Mexico's or Cuba's wars of independence, for example). In Brazil, however, it was the Crown Prince of Portugal, Pedro I of Brazil, who proclaimed Independence and installed himself as Emperor of Brazil. Although there were skirmishes, Portugal never tried to assert its control of Brazil after that, partly because the King of Portugal didn't want to engage in a war with his son.
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the geography of South America favoured the historical outcome. While Brazil has very few dividing geographical features (the only significant one is the Brazilian Sertao, a desert-like area in the North), Spanish South America is an extremely mountainous region, with an abundance of geographical features that make communication and travel difficult...
And thirdly, Spanish South America was much bigger than Brazil, not to mention that it was more... how should I put it... vertical... The distance between Southern Chile and Venezuela are simply astonishing and would make it very difficult for a central authority to effectively govern these two very distant areas effectively. Not to mention that their needs would be totally different.