Brazil Independent

Portugal had ruled Brazil as a colony since the early sixteenth century, but the relationship shifted dramatically after 1808, when the Portuguese royal family fled to Rio de Janeiro to escape Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. Brazil was raised to the status of a kingdom equal to Portugal, and its ports and economy flourished. When King John VI returned to Lisbon in 1821, he left his son Dom Pedro as regent, while the Portuguese parliament moved to reduce Brazil once more to colonial status.

Resenting these efforts and pressed by Brazilian elites, Dom Pedro refused orders to return to Europe. On September 7, 1822, beside the Ipiranga River near Sao Paulo, he proclaimed Brazil's separation from Portugal in the gesture remembered as the 'Cry of Ipiranga.' He was soon acclaimed as Pedro I, constitutional emperor of an independent Brazilian Empire, distinct from the republics emerging across Spanish America.

The break from Portugal was achieved with comparatively little bloodshed, and Portugal formally recognized Brazilian independence in 1825. Brazil's emergence as a monarchy gave it unusual political continuity in nineteenth-century South America, lasting until the empire was overthrown and a republic declared in 1889. The independence of 1822 laid the foundation for the largest and most populous nation on the continent.