State of Maranhão and Piauí

The State of Maranhão and Piauí was one of the states of the Portuguese Empire in northern Brazil, created in 1772 and dissolved in 1775. It owed its existence to the economic success of the State of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, which had grown prosperous through the trade in cocoa, cotton and other forest products of the Amazon. Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the Marquis of Pombal and secretary of state to King Joseph I, decided to divide that large unit into two governments, the State of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro in the west and the State of Maranhão and Piauí in the east, in the belief that smaller administrations would foster further development. The experiment did not produce the expected results, and in 1775 the crown merged both states into the State of Brazil, completing the unification of Portuguese America under a single colonial government seated at Rio de Janeiro. The short-lived state therefore marks one stage in the series of reforms through which Pombal tried to tighten Lisbon's control over the Amazon and the north-east, and its territory corresponds to the modern states of Maranhão and Piauí, with São Luís as the capital.