Why was Brazil's capital chosen?

Answer 1

Brazil's first capital was Salvador da Bahia, from around 1549, since it was the major port city in Portugal's early sugar-growing region. After 1764, when the mines opened up in the interior and the sugar economy declined, Rio de Janeiro, which was a closer major port to this newer area of wealth, became the administrative capital. Rio stayed the capital through the end of Portuguese rule, the independent Brazilian Empire (1822-1889) and the new Brazilian Republic. Both Rio and Salvador are coastal cities, meaning that they would be more susceptible to foreign attack, as happened during Brazil's early history (especially in the 1620s and 1630s). In 1891, after the founding of the Brazilian Republic, the new Constitution designated that a new capital be built and a few years later, in 1894, the land was set aside in Goiás State, which is in the center of Brazil. (The name "Brasília" had been coined back in 1823.) The new capital didn't really get underway until 1956, when newly elected President Juscelino Kubitschek began the process of developing Brasília, selecting architect Oscar Niemeyer and others to draw up a plan and then recruiting tons of workers to construct the new city. He inaugurated it in 1960, even though it was unfinished, but it has become one of Brazil's most famous and important cities in over the last 49 years.