When cultures of Indians, Portuguese and African Blacks met, they melted while conflicted, which formed the rudiment of Brazilian culture. The entry of numerous immigrants made the Brazilian society more open and the cultural ingredients more complex. These cultures further melted in conflicts through production activities and other social activities and formed present Brazilian culture.After Portugal occupied Brazil, the original social formation of “clan communalism” of Brazil Indians was changed. Portuguese colonists destroyed the Indian society in two ways. Firstly, they sharply decreased the population of Indians through wars, enslavement and contagion of diseases from Europe. Secondly, Jesuits missionized the Indians to have them convert to western civilization. While the colonists destroyed Indian culture and changed them to labor forces, the traditional Indian culture partly melted into Brazilian society which took Portuguese culture as the mainstream culture as well. As half-breeds of white people and Indians became an important component of Brazilian population, Brazil began to acknowledge the social organizations, languages, beliefs and traditions of Indians in constitution issued in 1988.The “introduction” of black has a significantly historical influence on formation and development of Brazilian culture. From 1550 to 1855, about 4 million black slaves were sold to Brazil and most of them were male. At that time Brazil, in its sugar period and mining period, needed a large number of labors so that sugarcane was even called as “slave crop”. Black slaves replaced Indians to become major labors of Brazilian society. Meanwhile, black slaves brought their dietary habits, religious beliefs, music and dance as well as technologies of crop planting and mineral mining to Brazil. Black women undertook the household chores of white families and played a role of wet nurse, which directly favored the communication and melting of cultures.
There are no white people, black people or yellow people but Brazilian.500 years ago, Pedro Álvares Cabral, a navigator, led the Portuguese fleet to South America accidentally, which symbolized the beginning of Portuguese conquest to Brazil. And in the 500 years afterwards, a series of dramatic transformations happened to Brazil. In the course of creating Brazil to its colonial country, Portuguese enslaved Indians, introduced a large number of African slaves and violently grabbed and at the same time gave birth to many half-breeds who brought independence of Brazil with their state awareness acquired afterwards.After slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, shortage of labors became a serious problem for coffee industry development, which directly triggered large-scale immigration. Brazilian historians regard the foreigners including Portuguese who came to Brazil after 1808 as immigrants. In 1808, 658 Chinese tea growers came to Rio de Janeiro from Macao and Guangzhou. In 1818, 1,682 Swiss immigrated to Nova Friburgo of Rio de Janeiro. In 1824, the first German immigrants came to Brazil. In 1875, Italians immigrated to and settled in the south of Brazil. In 1908, the first Japanese immigrants landed at Porto de Santos. Later, immigrants from over 70 countries, including Spain, France, Netherlands, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Czech, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Korea, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, East Africa, Africa, Angola, and Mozambique, came to Brazil.Immigration plays a significant role in culture formation and diplomatic activities of Brazil. Since the late nineteenth century, Brazilians have “began to resort to diplomacy rather than force to settle its territorial dispute in South America” in the course of defending and expanding its territory. By this means, Brazil successively settled border disputes with Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and French Guiana as well as navigation issues of Amazon River and Labrador River. Easy settlement of these complex disputes owes to the “immigrant aid” embedded in Brazilian diplomacy.
