These tribes are believed to have lived off the land as hunters and gathers. (4)European Colonialism Effect on the EconomyEuropean colonialism changed the economy in Brazil drastically. The country went basically from hunters and gatherers to a major source of goods for exports do largely to the Portuguese. Portugal explored Brazil because of the European commercial expansion of the fifteen and sixteenth centuries. Portugal began in the fifteenth century to search for other routes to the sources of goods valued in European markets. At first the Portuguese did not find mineral riches in their American colony, but did not lose hope. The Portuguese had to defend the Brazil from European intruders, they did this by establishing a pioneer colonial enterprise. They began to produce sugar, and then in 1531 cattle began to arrive in Brazil, and developed quickly as an industry. The cattle developed to the needs of the sugar industry for transportation and food for the workers. (5) By the mid-sixteenth century, Portugal had succeeded in establishing a sugar economy in parts of the colony's northeastern coast. Sugar production, the first large-scale colonial agricultural enterprise, was made possible by a series of favorable conditions. Portugal had the agricultural and manufacturing know-how from its Atlantic islands and manufactured its own equipment for extracting sugar from sugarcane. Furthermore, being involved in the African slave trade, it had access to the necessary manpower. Finally, Portugal relied on the commercial skills of the Dutch and financing from Holland to enable a rapid penetration of sugar in Europe's markets. Until the early seventeenth century, the Portuguese and the Dutch held a virtual monopoly on sugar exports to Europe. However, between 1580 and 1640 Portugal was incorporated into Spain, a country at war with Holland. The Dutch occupied Brazil's sugar area in the Northeast from 1630 to 1654, establishing direc...
