Trinidade Island

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Trinidade Island

Trinidade Island, a small, uninhabited volcanic island 680 miles off the coast of Espírito Santo. Discovered by Tristão da Cunha for Portugal in the sixteenth century, the island was visited by English astronomer Edmund Halley in 1700 when he explored the South Atlantic as captain of the Paramour. The island was reputed to be the site of a fortune in ecclesiastical gold and silver buried by pirates in the nineteenth century. This rumor may have encouraged the 1895 invasion of the island by Great Britain. Britain's justification for its actions was that the island had been unoccupied for more than a century. Upon Brazilian protest and mediation by Dom Carlos I, king of Portugal, Great Britain recognized Brazilian rights to the island in 1896.

See alsoPiracy .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

E. F. Knight, Cruise of the "Alerte" (1929).

Additional Bibliography

Azzoni, Carlos Roberto. Geography and Income Convergence among Brazilian States. Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2000.

Rocha, Jan. Brazil. Oxford: Oxfam, 2000.

Vincent, John S. Culture and Customs of Brazil. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.

                                       Sheila L. Hooker

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