Brazil Flag

Le champ vert et le losange d'or du drapeau impérial précédente

The national flag of Brazil (Portuguese: Bandeira do Brasil), often colloquially called the Auriverde (The Gold and Green), is a blue disc depicting a starry sky spanned by a curved band inscribed with the national motto, within a gold rhombus, on a green field. Brazil officially adopted this design for its national flag on November 19, 1888, replacing the flag of the Empire of Brazil. The concept was the work of Raimundo Teixeira Mendes, with the collaboration of Miguel Lemos, Manuel Pereira Reis and Décio Villares.

The green field and the gold rhombus from the previous imperial flag were preserved — the green represented the House of Braganza of Pedro I, the first Emperor of Brazil, while the gold represented the House of Habsburg of his wife, Empress Maria Leopoldina. A blue circle with 27 white five-pointed stars replaced the arms of the Empire of Brazil. The stars, whose position in the flag reflect the sky over Rio de Janeiro on November 15, 1889, represent the union's federated units - each star representing a specific state, plus one for the Federal District.

Brazil was inhabited solely by indigenous people, mainly of the Tupi and Guarani ethnic groups. Settling by the Portuguese began late in the 16th century, with the extraction of valuable wood from the pau brasil tree, from which the country draws its name. Brazil was settled by the Portuguese and not the Spanish, as were the rest of Central, South and parts of North America in the New World. Despite Portuguese rule, some parts of Brazil formed a Dutch colony between 1630 and 1654. They founded several cities, such as Mauritsville (actually Recife, capital of the state of Pernambuco, at the edge of North-East of the country), and many sugar cane plantations. The Dutch fought a grim jungle war with the Portuguese, and without the support of the Republic of their homeland due to a war with England, the Dutch surrendered to the Portuguese, though they did not officially recognize Portuguese rule, which led to an all-out war with Portugal off the coast of Portugal in 1656. In 1665 the Peace Treaty of The Hague was signed, Portugal lost its Asian colonies and had to pay 63 tons of gold to compensate the Dutch Republic for the loss of its colony.

Brazil became the centre of the Portuguese Empire by 1808, when the King Dom João VI (John VI) fled from Napoleon's invasion of Portugal and established himself and his government in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

The following centuries saw further exploitation of the country's natural riches such as gold and rubber, alongside the rise of an economy based largely on sugar, coffee and African slave labour. Meanwhile, extermination and Christianizing of natives kept its pace, and in the 19th and 20th centuries a second wave of immigration took place, mainly Italian, German (in southern Brazil), Spanish, Japanese (in São Paulo and Paraná states) and Portuguese, making Brazilian culture and society complex and unique.

Following three centuries under the rule of Portugal, Brazil became an independent nation on September 7th, 1822. Until 1889 Brazil was an Empire under the rule of Dom Pedro I and his son Dom Pedro II. By this time, it became an emerging international power.

But during these three and a half centuries, Brazil was the nation in the Americas with the most widespread slavery, the first to bring African people to work by force, and the last to set them free. Due to English laws against slavery (some argue more for economic contests than humanity reasons) and fighting between white and black people, slaves and free, for abolition, slavery ended in 1888. But freedom didn't mean equality to the now-free black people and their descendants.