How come Portugal's colonies in South America stayed as one big country post-independence instead of splintering into...

How come Portugal's colonies in South America stayed as one big country post-independence instead of splintering into many small countries?

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because it was only 1 colony, not several different colonies.

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This is incorrect... originally the country was ~14 colonies, then merged into 2 colonies, then eventually merged again into one.

Long story short: atypical independence.

For most countries, you had people taking on arms and actually fighting for their lands. This originated a bunch of countries, regardless of colonial divisions.

For Brazil though it was more like the Portuguese prince (Peter I / IV) splitting the "kingdom of Brazil" and "kingdom of Portugal and the Algarves" crowns. He did it because they knew they would be unable to deal with republicans and the independence movements at the same time, so at least the kingdom was still his familiar possession. Eventually he tried to remerge the crowns and stirred some trouble in Portugal, but he failed.

inb4 why were the colonies a kingdom?

This was done in a rush by John VI (Peter I's father), so it could run away from Napoleon and show its own people the middle finger without being considered in exile.

And yes, "it", I refuse to call that piece of shit by human pronouns.

but we wuz 13 colonies and we became one country
and brazil was like 2 or something

Maybe because they had the same language and religion. The other states were kind of scattered. Well I still don't know why Gran Colombia had to split up. Brazil will surely reap the benefits of staying unified within this century

Initially 14. Pic related - the border is slightly wrong, but this should give you an idea.

The eventual merge into "Maranhão" and "Brazil" was fairly later.

>>Maybe because they had the same language and religion.
Not really. This happened before nationalism; people overestimate the role of languages in those situations. And up to ~1750 a good chunk of the country spoke not one but three languages (Portuguese, Nhe'engatu and Tupi Austral).

On religion: you don't think the blacks and the Amerindians would simply give up their beliefs, do you? It was always religiously heterogeneous.

>Well I still don't know why Gran Colombia had to split up.
American meddling.

>Brazil will surely reap the benefits of staying unified within this century
Yeah, because paying taxes to a remote government in the fucking middle of the nowhere that creates internal strife to remain roughly coherent is surely a great thing for the population, right. /sarcasm

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That's pretty complex to explain. It has to do with the coming of the king of Portugal, Dom João VI, who made us a kingdom, not a colony anymore. He was the first European monarch to set a foot on America.

But notice, he turned Brazil into a centralized monarchy. It was maintained with the two upcoming kings, Pedro I (João's son) and Pedro II (Pedro's son), after our independence, in 1822.
Brazil is a massive HUGE country. Most of its territory was unknown, full of forests, without a free population, without civilization, without art, and without roads. It had opposing interests and a huge amount of slaves with no education.
If Brazil had not become a centralized monarchy, with a powerful king, able to stop any riot and separatist movements, how would it survive?

Cringe, but also based

Dunno if this "cringe" is directed at the history or me...