Ships were lost during these dark voyages, and said to have had an average life of about two years. The discovery by the Portuguese of the West African route to the Indies brought about the transformation in shipping, making it possible to sail the shorter route. Portuguese ships called Indiás were first built in Mozambique and then transferred to Ceuta. According to one source, the city was a terminus for "hundreds of ships a year carrying slaves from Morocco to the New World". The gold from Portugal's Brazilian gold coast was a major factor in spreading the Portuguese language across the globe, starting with the sailors who accompanied the ships, and thus was a major source of income for the Portuguese crown. The Portuguese were the first to discover the use of African slaves in the Americas. Beginning in the 16th century, the Portuguese exported large numbers of slaves from the Guinea Coast of Africa, as well as the Cape Verde Islands, and would play a major role in the abolitionist movement during the second half of the 18th century. While the Atlantic slave trade to the Americas eventually ended through different means, the Portuguese overseas empire was later transformed by its own use of African slaves, and had expanded substantially by the late 19th century. The Portuguese were active in Southeast Asia from the 15th century, and in the early 16th century captured Malacca and converted the region into the Maluku islands, an important source of spices, especially cloves. Portuguese rule in Malacca lasted for more than a century, and it was the focus of the spice trade between Europe and Asia. By 1536 Portugal had reached as far as Cape Verde, a Portuguese outpost. The Portuguese established permanent settlements in São Tomé and Principe, which produced sugar for Portugal, and in Brazil, where they developed trade with the indigenous population and grew sugar, plantations and cattle for the Brazilian coastal elites. Brazil was a large producer of sugar that supplied European markets, while the gold from Brazil helped finance its explorations. In 1588, the Spanish invaded Portugal, and the two countries began a struggle known as the Portuguese Restoration War. During the war, Portuguese Brazil remained under royal control, while the Portuguese in Angola, Cape Verde and São Tomé managed to maintain their independence. At the end of the war, the Portuguese Crown signed the Treaty of Lisbon, that established in the Portuguese the exclusive right to settle Brazil. In the new treaty, the Portuguese Crown ceded Angola and Macau, to the Spanish, who held sovereignty for a term of five years, but those territories were not ceded. The territory in Brazil was defined as the new area to be administered by the Portuguese government, who would be allowed to send one hundred people to occupy the land. In 1774 a group of Portuguese merchants in Rio de Janeiro established the Banco do Brazil, the first bank in Brazil and in South America. The Bank of Brazil later served as a basis for the creation of Banco do Brasil. Although the Treaty of Tordesillas, the 1580 treaty between Spain and Portugal, stated that Brazil, Guanahaní and its dependencies were to be controlled by Spain, in fact, the Portuguese were granted permission to settle the land, under the Treaty of Lisbon. The two were eventually combined in a single charter, which provided the framework for all future treaties of that nature. Since the Spanish had exclusive rights to settle in the East Indies, under the Treaty of Zaragoza, only the Portuguese were entitled to start and establish settlements in Brazil. When the monarchy was restored, in 1640, Brazil became the centre of the Portuguese empire, known as the Portuguese America. From its discovery, and by the late 17th century, Brazilian sugar was the major ingredient of the Portuguese economy, being its largest foreign exchange earner. That resulted in wealth to the Portuguese elite, who had grown from a mercantile background in Portugal to become the economic and political elites in the colonies. But, the sugar industry was also a major factor in the development of slavery. In this context, to the economic, military, and religious aspects of the empire in the early 18th century, can be added the political, cultural and social aspects, so that the sugar economy that arose in Brazil gave rise to the first sugar society. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602 to trade in the East Indies and on the fringes of the Portuguese world, but it was unsuccessful in its objectives and failed, being dissolved in 1796. As early as 1597, there were suggestions that the Dutch would be interested in Brazil, and King John II of Portugal considered the Dutch, along with the English and the French, as the most important threats to the Portuguese empire. From the 16th century, the Dutch had contacts with Brazil by way of the Spanish Netherlands. There were also occasional Dutch expeditions on the coast of Brazil. In addition, Dutch sailors served as volunteers in Portuguese troops sent to Brazil. The Dutch reached Surinam by way of the Caribbean, and a few of them settled there, but the Dutch East India Company tried to attract settlers for the region, and built ships, in 1617 and 1621, in Amsterdam. The Dutch settlers suffered due to the hostilities between the Dutch and English on the part of the Dutch, which were in part caused by the Dutch efforts to build a monopoly in the region. In 1621, the Portuguese government in Brazil forbade the sale of arms to the Dutch, and the same thing happened in 1630. In that year the Dutch built a fortified port, named Colonia, at Cayenne on the French Guyana coast. In 1640, there were 2,000 Dutch people in Brazil, which caused the Dutch East India Company to send two fleets, including one of twenty-four ships, under the command of Admiral Jacobsz, to occupy Brazilian territory. With the Treaty of Olinda, signed on 22 January 1645, the Dutch were repelled from Brazil. There were also Dutch expeditions on the Guanabara River, and the Fort Amsterdam that was built in Guanabara Bay served the Dutch well in the time of governor Maurício de Sousa and his successor Pedro Fernandes de Souza, who gave it up to the Portuguese. With the War of the Spanish Succession, a new Dutch invasion of Brazil occurred, led by Governor-General Peter van de Plasse, who occupied the region. The Dutch occupation did not last, but they kept the region under control until 1755, when a Portuguese fleet, led by Manuel Faria de Albuquerque, re-conquered the Brazilian territory. From the 15th to the 19th century, Brazil, as an independent country, was the second largest economy in the world, behind China, in 1800, and had a higher GDP than the United Kingdom, just twenty years later. During that time, the Portuguese colonial power became the basis of the government of Brazil. On 25 March 1822, José Bonifácio de Andrade e Silva became the first Brazilian emperor and, on that date, the Brazilian empire reached its peak. The Portuguese colony of Brazil, which began at the beginning of the 16th century, survived and became independent on 5 September 1822. At the time, Emperor Pedro I was already dead, as well as Princess Teresa Cristina, and the Emperor's younger brother, Miguel, was in exile in Europe, and was to become the regent for the newborn King, his daughter Princess Maria II. In Brazil, a new political regime had been formed by the Liberal party, which called for independence from Portugal. As a result, the monarchical era had ended and a republic had been established, and its main leaders were Manuel Bento de Sousa, Pedro de Araújo Lima, José Bonifácio de Andrade e Silva, João Fernandes Vieira, and Diogo Antônio Feijó. The new Brazilian government decided to become an empire, but in order to be sure of what to do, they called, at the time, the "Old Portuguese", the one who had been born in Portugal and who had remained loyal to the monarchy, as a great figure and organizer to the empire, who would be the main ambassador of the new Empire. They sent the proposal to Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, known as Duke of Caxias, who refused the offer, but suggested to call on an officer from the Portuguese army, Dom Pedro de Alcântara, son of the Marquess of Alcaide. With the passage of time, Pedro Alcântara became known as the 1st Marquess of Maranhão. As a foreigner, he was not able to accept the title that was offered to him as Emperor of Brazil, but it was Pedro de Alcântara who convinced the Portuguese to keep the monarchy in Brazil. After the establishment of the Empire, there was a wave of migration from Portugal to Brazil, which increased after the opening of the borders between the two countries, in 1828. Until the end of the 19th century, Brazil developed as the only Portuguese territory that did not experience a decline in its population. The process of industrialization in Brazil was also more advanced than in Portugal, which helped to increase the volume of emigrants to Brazil. The Portuguese-speaking majority of the population of Brazil is a result of the demographic mixture that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century. The independence movement of the Empire was very weak, as Brazil was never colonized and not part of the European world. The Brazilians, the descendants of the emigrants from the Iberian Peninsula, became mostly white, with