ABSTRACT
One of the nations of Latin America whose colonial history began over four centuries ago, Brazil's independence was achieved in 1822 long before many of the former colonies of the Developing World had become colonies. The chronological sequence of her first settlement by Europeans, her colonial development and her final emergence as an independent sovereign state is not greatly different from that of the United States but, as Furtado suggests, while the United States followed the industrial road of Europe, Brazil did not (Furtado 1959). Though one of its more affluent members, with a per capita GNP which places her securely in the upper middle-income group of the World Bank's classification, Brazil is still today in the Developing World. This position in the continuum of the development spectrum selects Brazil as a case study but she possesses other characteristics which call for special comment.
