State of Maranhão

The State of Maranhão was the northern of the two administrative divisions of Portuguese America, created on 13 June 1621 when the Governorate General of Brazil was split into the State of Brazil, with its capital at Salvador, and the State of Maranhão, with its capital at São Luís. Its purpose was to strengthen the defence of the northern region and to promote trade with the interior. The state covered a large part of the Amazon basin and lived on the extraction of forest products, the so-called drugs of the sertão, gathered largely by indigenous slave labour; Jesuit missions held great influence and clashed repeatedly with settlers and governors. The capital remained São Luís, although Belém became the operational base of the governors after the 1670s and was formally designated capital in 1737. The state was extinguished in 1652 and reconstituted in 1654 as the State of Maranhão and Grão-Pará; in 1751 it was renamed Grão-Pará and Maranhão and the capital moved to Belém. Its history maps the slow advance of Portuguese settlement up the Amazon and the rivalry between crown, missions and colonists over land and Indian labour.