State of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro

The State of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro was a short-lived administrative unit of the Portuguese Empire in northern South America. It was created in 1772 by the Marquis of Pombal, who split the prosperous State of Grão-Pará and Maranhão into two separate states in the hope of improving their administration and finances. The new state was centred on Belém at the mouth of the Amazon and covered the vast interior drained by the Amazon's northern tributaries, including the Rio Negro. Its economy depended on collecting forest products such as cacao, cloves, sarsaparilla and timber, and on the labour of indigenous peoples and African slaves. In 1775, facing financial difficulties in Belém and São Luís, the Portuguese crown merged both states into the State of Brazil, formally uniting Portuguese America under a single colonial government. Grão-Pará nevertheless retained a large measure of autonomy from Rio de Janeiro and was governed from Belém until 1823, when it formally joined the independent Empire of Brazil. Its separate identity left a lasting mark on the Amazon region, whose integration into the Brazilian state remained contested throughout the nineteenth century.