Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: Brasil or República Federativa do Brasil, Some possible pronunciations:IPA: , , , , . It should be noticed that standard brasilian portuguese pronunciantion allows variant realisations of some phonemes, and that those variations do not necessarily imply any regional accent. European Portuguese pronunciation of the official name of Brazil is: . See Portuguese Phonology for more details.), is the largest and most populous country in South America, and fifth largest in the world in both area and population. Spanning a vast area between central South America and the Atlantic Ocean, it is the easternmost country of the Americas and it borders Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and the French department of French Guiana. In fact, it borders every South American nation except for Ecuador and Chile. The country's name is generally believed to be derived from pau-brasil (brazilwood), a tree highly valued by early colonists, though some credit the name to a mythical land mentioned in Europe during Middle Ages. Brazil is home to both extensive agricultural lands and rain forests. Exploiting vast natural resources and a large labor pool, it is South America's leading economic power and a regional leader. Because this country was a former colony of Portugal, Portuguese is its official language. Brazil has the world's second largest Christian population (151 million, behind that of the United States), and also is the world's largest Roman Catholic-majority nation in terms of both number of adherents and land mass --- a strong cultural legacy left behind by the Roman Catholic Portuguese colonists.

History

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Brazil is thought to have been inhabited for at least 10,000 years by semi-nomadic populations before the first Portuguese explorers, led by Pedro Álvares Cabral, disembarked in 1500. Over the next three centuries, it was resettled by the Portuguese and exploited mainly for brazilwood (Pau-Brasil) at first, and later for sugarcane (Cana-de-Açúcar) agriculture, coffee beans and gold mining. The colony's source of manpower was initially on enslaved Amerindians, and after 1550, mainly African slaves. In 1808, Queen Maria I of Portugal and her son and regent, the future João VI of Portugal, fleeing from the armies of Napoleon, relocated to Brazil with the royal family, nobles and government.

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