Introduction

From the early 16th to the mid-19th century, Brazil maintained close relations with Africa that were dominated by the slave trade. During this period more than five million Africans were deported to Brazil, making it by far the largest destination of the transatlantic slave trade. Brazil's colonial economy was based on three main pillars: external dependency, large landownership and slavery. The African slaves shaped Brazilian society and culture. Following the end of the slave trade in 1850 and the colonisation of Africa by European powers from the late 19th century, Brazil's relations with Africa ceased for more than a century and were only re-established in the early 1960s when the presidents Jânio Quadros and João Goulart pursued an independent foreign policy that rejected automatic alignment with the United States and Portugal, and sought to expand the country's bilateral relations with socialist countries and newly independent countries in the Afro-Asian world. Brazil was portrayed as an anti-colonial and anti-racist country that shared many similarities with other Third World countries. However, the Independent Foreign Policy was fiercely counteracted by the anti-communist opposition and the influential Portuguese immigrant communities that supported the Salazar regime's colonial policy. In addition, the foreign policy remained ambiguous and inconsistent as, despite the rhetoric, Quadros and Goulart never dared to put Brazil's close relations with Salazarist Portugal or South Africa's apartheid regime at risk.

The military coup in 1964 ended Brazil's first rapprochement with African countries due to the anti-communist military leaders’ realignment of the country's foreign policy with Washington and Lisbon. Africa only reappeared as a target of Brazil's foreign policy when the country's economic growth was threatened by the Arab oil embargo in 1973. Brazil's pragmatic foreign policy offensive towards Africa under the Ernesto Geisel presidency in 1974 was facilitated by the military coup that overthrew the Portuguese dictatorship in April that year. Under Geisel and João Figueiredo, the last two military rulers, Brazil successfully strengthened political and commercial relations with African countries. However, this second rapprochement with Africa also proved unsustainable due to Brazil's financial crisis in the mid-1980s and Africa's economic decline in the same period, when the diplomatic and trade relations between Brazil and African countries dropped to the levels of the early 1960s.