History of Espírito Santo

The prohibition of mining in Minas Gerais and the presence of hostile tribes in the countryside contributed to Espírito Santo remaining for a long time an essentially coastal captaincy.

But it was only in 1963 that Espírito Santo acquired its current geographical configuration, with the solution of the old dispute between the state and Minas Gerais, regarding the ownership of the Serra dos Aimorés region.

Today, Espírito Santo has valuable assets in the push for economic development: A privileged geographical location, rich reserves of radioactive minerals on the coast, one of the largest ore ports in the world, and the second-largest oil production in Brazil.

[3][4][5] On May 23, 1535, the Portuguese nobleman Vasco Fernandes Coutinho, veteran of the campaigns in Africa and India, docked in the lands of the captaincy, which had been assigned to him by King John III of Portugal.

For the patriarch of Espírito Santo, the captaincy that was initially a prize turned into punishment; he had to commit all his possessions to preserve his village and ended up dying poor.

Since 1561, the Jesuit Joseph of Anchieta had chosen the village of Reritiba as his refuge, from where he had to be constantly away, due to his duties, either in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, or Bahia.

The latter describes the Battle of Cricaré, an epic of a squadron sent from Bahia by Mem de Sá, general governor of Brazil, to the rescue of Vasco Fernandes Coutinho and his people, who were under siege by the Tamoio on the island of Vitória.

In 1625, the donee Francisco de Aguiar Coutinho faced the first Dutch attack, commanded by Pieter Pieterszoon Hein,[8] a fight in which the heroine Maria Ortiz stood out.

[8][1] The depletion of the population, which in the early days threatened several times to desert the captaincy, as well as the inability to continue its incipient agriculture, revealed the weakness of the foundations on which the local colonization was based.

In 1674, the purchase of the territory from the last donee of the Câmara Coutinho family was made by the Bahia nobleman Francisco Gil de Araújo, for forty thousand cruzados, a transaction confirmed by a royal letter of March 18, 1675.

[11] This search had begun at the initiative of the general government and the cycle was limited to a few relevant expeditions, whose importance lied less in the results obtained, than in the dynamization of interest in the area and greater knowledge of the countryside.

[8][13] Gil de Araújo promoted 14 expeditions across the Rio Doce, heading to the Serra das Esmeraldas, which may have had contact with the Paulistans (bandeirantes) of Fernão Dias Pais.

[12] Francisco Gil's activity and capital expenditure did not result in any metalliferous discoveries, although there were some gains in land valuation, through the establishment of settlers and the creation of new engenhos.

His son and heir, likely for this reason, preferred to stay away from the lordship and, after his death, the captaincy became vacant and was sold to the crown by Cosme Rolim de Moura, a cousin of the last donee.

[12] The movement aroused the attention of the Bahian authorities and ended up being hampered by the care of the royal monopoly and fear of a foreign invasion of Minas Gerais from Espíriro Santo.

In 1747, the ombudsman Manuel Nunes Macedo described the situation in Vitória as follows:[8]"Here there is no jail or town hall, because they fell down and my predecessors did not take care in rebuilding them (...) for the City Council has no income.

"[8]The obstinacy of the miners and the improvements made in the defense system eventually weakened the prohibitions, and in 1758, according to a royal order, a road to the mines was opened and a discharge post was established in the village of Campos.

On October 8 of the same year, Silva Pontes signed the act, together with the representative of the government of Minas Gerais, which regulated the collection of taxes between the two captaincies.

[8] During the independence movement, in March and April 1821, several political commotions occurred in Espírito Santo, while the choice of its representatives happened in the courts of Lisbon.

To this end, the government encouraged the use of land by foreign settlers, which occurred simultaneously with the arrival of farmers from Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, and São Paulo.

[8][18] Thanks to the fruitful work of these settlers, when slavery of the blacks was abolished - which overthrew the large farms - the economy of Espírito Santo endured and provided its presidents after the republic was proclaimed with the means necessary for undertakings such as the construction of railroads, expansion of education and organization of urban plans.

Despite being located outside the cultivation region, the city of Vitória was the one that most progressed with the coffee boom, and in 1879, the first studies were made for the construction of a port, which should allow for the transportation of the entire production of the province.

Meeting the new demands, in the middle of the century, the press of the state of Espírito Santo began to function,[8] with the circulation of the newspaper O Correio da Vitória, owned by Pedro Antônio de Azeredo, starting in 1849.

[8] Shortly before, the province had lost part of its lands due to the disannexation of Campos dos Goytacases and São João da Barra, returned to Rio de Janeiro in 1832.

[8] The occupation of the north of Espírito Santo only began in the first decades of the 20th century and gained new momentum after the construction of the Colatina bridge over the Doce River, inaugurated in 1928.

[8] With the Revolution of 1930, João Punaro Bley took charge of the state, as intervenor, and was kept by the Estado Novo until 1943, under whose administration the port of Vitória and the construction of an ore dock were started.

[8][22] With the installation of Tubarão, the region was endowed with an infrastructure that propitiated the emergence of a new industrial complex that contains an iron ore pellet plant, with a production capacity of two million tons per year.

[24] In April 2008, the Federal Police carried out Operation Welfare Aid ("Operação Auxílio-Sufrágio"), which dismantled a gang specializing in fraud against the Social Security Plan in the state.

[31] The following year also presented a natural disaster, as the wave of waste from the dam collapse in Mariana, Minas Gerais, reached Espírito Santo.