The Cambridge History of Latin America (CHLA) is an authoritative survey of Latin America's unique historical experience during the five centuries from the first contacts between the native peoples of the Americas and Europeans in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries to the present day.

Colonial Brazil brings together seven chapters from volumes I and II of The Cambridge History of Latin America in a single volume which, it is hoped, will be useful for both teachers and students of Latin American history. The chapters examine the early Portuguese settlement of Brazil in the sixteenth century, the political and economic structures of the empire, sugar plantations and African slavery, the Indians and the frontier, the gold rushes, imperial reorganisation in the second half of the eighteenth century, and demographic, economic and political changes during the final decades of the empire. Each chapter is accompanied by a bibliographical essay.