Eli5 how did Brazil become so ethnically diverse?
In: 12
Brazil’s Indigenous population was devastated by European diseases, declining from a pre-Columbian high of 2 to 3 million to some 300,000 as of 1997. Meanwhile, when Brazil was a colony of Portugal hundreds of thousands of Portuguese went to live in Brazil. After independence millions more immigrants entered Brazil, mostly from Portugal and Italy, but also from Spain, Germany, Poland and other countries.
In addition, millions of sub-Saharan Africans were enslaved and transported to Brazil. As noted in Wikipedia:
> Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish the enslavement of human beings. By the time slavery was abolished, on May 13, 1888, an estimated 5.8 million enslaved people had been transported from Africa to Brazil. This was 40% of the total number of enslaved people trafficked from Africa to the Americas, according to one estimate.
In comparison, less than 400,000 enslaved people were transported to the United States.
As a result, there are more Brazilians with pure or mixed sub-Saharan ancestry than there are with only European heritage. Whites are a slight minority in the country, slightly under 50%. Indigenous peoples are a very small minority, even smaller than the number of people with Asian heritage.
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