u/Crafty-Company-2906

Hear me out.

This is a bit unrealistic but also not unrealistic if you get what I mean.

In the 1600s, preferably early 1600s once Brazil is explored enough we have a king who is infatuated with this huge land visit the colony, he quickly sees the enormous size and potential of the region, but notices the lack of people to develop such lands.

After seeing the sub par human beings who manage to start and survive the voyage he is sure that this was Brazil will never be developed, he sees the size and then compares it to Portugal, he sees the clear lack of possible expansion in Europe.

He puts One and one together and decides that Portugal should move and slowly sell the European lands, Europe is just too hot to stay and Portugal is small..

At first mostly city folk get send onto barges and shipped across the Atlantic, to have a real foothold.

Once established after 10-20 years slowly border provinces are sold to Spain, bit by bit, Spain won't need to conquer the land and deal with an unruly population, they just have to wait buy the land and colonize it.

Small Provinces get evacuated and sold, population brought to the cities and whenever a ship is available packed onto it an send, the money get from selli the land should pay for these ships mostly.

Slowly peasants start arriving and European style territories develop, you get European style towns and cities and lots lots of farmland surrounding it.

Due to a relatively early more thorough colonization, about 3-4 million Portuguese will be moved, let's say 5 or so because it takes a while and people who remain will have children.

Brazils population will much sooner be significant, Brazil would verry likely compete with the us in terms of numbers, because of the more or less fast transfer I see them being equal for quite a while.

Portugal will completely abandon all European holdings and make Brazil Portugal, African colonies will still be sought after but developing Brazil is a priority.

I think it's a cool idea let's have the kind be 15 when he starts and get up to 90 years old so the process can't be stopped.

I will call Brazil from now on Portugal.

Portugal would be verry different, some of the for me interesting things is that due to higher state control, (I'm not saying it won't happen but it will be verry much reduced to varying degrees) is slavery, specifically slave raids into the amazon for slaves, this means more uncontacted tribes would survive, cool fact.

We won't see that much animal husbandry, in regions were land is not good for growing crops sure, but Brazil will much less be known for huge flocks of animals, more traditional European agriculture, means a higher population can be sustained and because there is actually a big class of peasants all land that can be developed will be, contact to Europe would be limited but the industrial revolution would reach Portugal maybe a couple decades later, trade will be significant after all because Portugal would have a huge population by the 1800s, not gigantic but big enough to trade sufficiently and for ideas to spread.

Portugal would also much more so than historically compete with Europe for immigration, I'm not sure if they want to have migrants in that scenario because it's their core land, but it's also possible.

Portugal would be rich I think, maybe not as much as America but not too far behind I'm sure.

Although the isolation could also mean monarchy lasts much longer, not sure.

One interesting consequence is also that Portugal would due to the possibility to actually have a large population have a large population by the mid 1800s, meaning africa would like also see much more Portuguese settle there, Portugal being powerful enough to get the connection between Mozambique and Angola is also possible, they could be an upper class middle power or even great power if their population is big enough.

The lack of Portugal would change Europe quite a bit but I don't see history collapsing in on itself, generally we will see many things unfolding the same.

I have some other ideas of what could happen but I just wanted to post the rough outline, maybe others are interested in adding to this