BRAZIL 1000 reis 1856

Description

Political events in Portugal led to an attempt to reimpose colonial status on Brazil. The Brazilians resisted. In 1822 Prince Pedro took their side and a buyout was negotiated, making Pedro the Emperor of Brazil. After a three year war Portugal recognized the separation. The monarchy was overthrown by a military coup in 1889.

The Portuguese came to Brazil looking for gold. They stayed for the slaves, starting agricultural colonies. They explained it like this: since there were cannibals here and there they would go capture native people, say that they had saved them from being eaten, therefore the people they had captured owed them their lives, so now they were “legal” slaves. Last of the European style countries to free their slaves. I have a Brazilian friend. He says: Brazil, land of tomorrow, tomorrow.

In 1494, when Portugal and Spain were getting ready to seize land in the Western Hemisphere they asked the Pope to sort out the disagreements between them rather than fighting over everything. The Pope pointed to a longitude on a map and gave Portugal everything on one side and Spain everything on the other. Worked out well for Spain. Portugal got Brazil. Spain got everything else.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.