History of the state of São Paulo
History of Brazilian state
São Paulo is one of 26 states of the Federative Republic of Brazil. It has been inhabited since 12000 BC, when the first indigenous people came to the area. Portuguese and Spanish navigators arrived in the 15th century. In 1532, Portuguese explorer Martim Afonso de Sousa officially founded the first Portuguese settlement in the Americas, the village of São Vicente.
In the 17th century, the bandeirantes accelerated exploration of the interior, expanding Portugal's territories in South America beyond the agreed borders set by the Treaty of Tordesilhas.
After the Captaincy of São Paulo was established in the 18th century, the region increased in political importance, although it achieved more significant economic and population growth after the independence of Brazil.
Under the Empire of Brazil, São Paulo's economy was based on coffee plantations. In the second half of the 19th century, European immigrants increasingly replaced slave labor on plantations, mainly Italians attracted by the imperial government's offer of land. Increased coffee cultivation and the construction of railroads drove the growth of the state's economy. In the 20th century, especially in the Vargas Era, state economic development primarily centered on the industrial sector, which fueled production for all of Brazil.
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This entry incorporates text from “History of the state of São Paulo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.