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From the mid-16th century, and particularly during the 17th century, African slaves were compelled to replace Indians on the plantations. They were less vulnerable to  European diseases, but their lives were short nevertheless. Quilombos , communities of runaway slaves, were common throughout the colonial era. They ranged from mocambos , small groups hidden in the forests, to the great republic of Palmares that survived for much of the 17th century. In the 1690s, gold was discovered in Minas Gerais and the rush was on. Brazilians and Portuguese flooded into the territory and countless slaves were brought from Africa to dig and die in the mines.
In 1807, Napoleon's army marched on Lisbon. Two days before the invasion, the Portuguese Prince Regent, later to become Dom João VI, set sail for Brazil. Soon after arriving, he made Rio de Janeiro the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve; Brazil became the only New World colony to serve as the seat of a European monarch. In 1822 the Prince Regent's son, Pedro, who had been left behind to rule the colony when his father returned to Portugal , pulled out his sword and yelled the battle cry ' Independência ou morte! ' (independence or death). Portugal was too weak to fight its favorite son, so Brazil became an independent empire without spilling a drop of blood.
During the 19th century, coffee replaced sugar as Brazil 's major export. At first the coffee plantations used slave labor, but with the abolition of slavery in 1888, thousands of European immigrants, mostly Italians, poured in to work on the coffee estates, called fazendas . In 1889, a military coup, supported by the powerful coffee aristocracy, toppled the Brazilian Empire, and for the next 40 years Brazil was governed by a series of military and civilian presidents supervised, in effect, by the armed forces.
In 1929, the global economic crisis weakened the coffee planters' hold on the government and an opposition Liberal Alliance was formed with the support of nationalist military officers. When the Liberal Alliance lost the election in 1930, the military seized power on their behalf and installed the Liberal leader, Getúlio Vargas, as president. Vargas, whose regime was inspired by Mussolini's and Salazar's fascist states, dominated the political scene for the next 24 years, until he was forced out of office in 1954. His replacement, Juscelino Kubitschek, was the first of Brazil 's big spenders; he built Brasília, the new capital, which was supposed to catalyse the development of the interior.
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