This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

Subtitled "Growing Pains of a Colonial Society", Professor C.R. Boxer's book explores how the small European kingdom of Portugal established the vast colony of Brazil, extending to almost half the area and population of the whole continent of South America.