History of the state of São Paulo

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.

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.

Cosme Fernandes Pessoa [pt], a Portuguese exile and castaway known as "the Bachelor of Cananéia", is considered the original founder of the São Vicente settlement by many historians.

[5][6][7] On the ruins of the old city, de Sousa founded São Vicente officially on January 20, 1532, making it the first legal Portuguese settlement in Brazil.

[7][8][9] De Sousa distributed sesmaria [pt] land grants and constructed several buildings, leaving São Vicente populated and organized.

Since the soil was sandy and had lost its protective layer, rains took the sand out to sea, silting the port of São Vicente, the only access to the Portuguese mainland.

[5][6][7] Despite the difficulties of crossing the Serra do Mar, the fields of the plateau attracted settlers and made São Paulo an exception in early Portuguese colonization, which usually concentrated on the coasts.

[5][6][7] The proliferation of mamelucos, resulting from marriages to the indigenous Tupi peoples that dominated the Brazilian coast, contributed to a cultural hybridism that attenuated less quickly than in other regions, where an influx of blacks and easier contact with the metropolis diluted it.

[5][10][full citation needed] Due to their isolation, the paulistas, as the residents of São Paulo are known, enjoyed considerable autonomy for the first two centuries in areas such as defense, indigenous relations, ecclesiastical administration, public works and municipal services, price controls and goods.

A hard ordeal was the effect of the discovery of gold on São Paulo and other villages on the plateau: all sought the immediate enrichment represented by the precious metal.

This demographic rupture, combined with the geographical factors already mentioned (the Serra do Mar), caused a fall in agricultural productivity, as well as a decline in other activities, which accentuated the people's poverty during the 18th century.

However, the number of inhabitants would not have decreased, only concentrated in the existing villages, and its population, despite not directly profiting from the mines, dominated the supply of food, mainly linked to livestock.

[17] However, soil exhaustion in the Paraíba Valley and the increasing restrictions imposed on the slavery regime[clarification needed] led to a decline in the region's coffee cultivation in 1860.

[18] The wealth created by coffee and the constant arrival of immigrants to the province, including Italians, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and Arabs, in addition to the development of a large network railroad, brought prosperity to São Paulo.

This reality had repercussions in the national sphere, hence the homogeneity of 1894 to 1902, in three consecutive quadrenniums, under presidents Prudente de Morais, Campos Sales and Rodrigues Alves.

[23][24] Despite internal dissension and several dissidents, the Partido Republicano Paulista (PRP) managed to maintain great cohesion in the face of the Union, which allowed it to carry forward a policy that generally satisfied dominant interests and undeniably contributed to the prestige of São Paulo within the federation.

He removed Jorge Tibiriçá and delegated power to Américo Brasiliense in 1891, who Deodoro da Fonseca considered the only one capable of organizing São Paulo.

In this environment, on June 8, 1891, the Constituent Assembly was installed and, in July, Américo Brasiliense, already chosen president of the state, promulgated the first constitution in São Paulo.

[25] Meanwhile, in the state, Américo Brasiliense handed over the government to Major Sérgio Tertuliano Castelo Branco, who soon passed it on to whoever was entitled: vice president José Alves de Cerqueira César.

This, in the face of the spirit of riot and monarchical reaction that reigned, dissolved the Legislative Assembly, immediately called another Congress and deposed all the city councils of the state.

Always showing determination and firmness, Cerqueira César called on the electorate to choose a new president of the state: Bernardino de Campos, the first São Paulo governor elected by direct suffrage.

[28][29] The 1930s in São Paulo were characterized, from an economic point of view, by efforts to adjust to the conditions created by the world crisis of 1929 and by the collapse of the price of coffee.

From a political point of view, the period was marked by a struggle to recover São Paulo's hegemony in the federation, reached by Aliança Liberal [pt] and finally annihilated by the revolution of 1930.

[30] The political organization however broke with the federal government and constituted, with the conservative classes and the old PRP, the Frente Única Paulista [pt] (United Front of São Paulo).

Fifty thousand men initially mobilized, whose command fell to General Bertolo Klingler, and later to Colonel Euclides de Oliveira Figueiredo.

Under the direction of Roberto Cochrane Simonsen [pt], the entire industrial park in São Paulo was placed at the service of the rebellion, dedicated to war production.

External immigration decreased and strikes by anarchists and communists broke out in São Paulo as industrial empires formed, such as that of the Matarazzo family.

[37] This economic recovery in the interior accelerated in the 1980s, when countless urban problems, such as violence, pollution and disorderly occupation, afflicted the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo.

[citation needed] Currently, although growth is lower and it faces competition from other states, São Paulo is the main economic and industrial hub of South America, the largest consumer market in Brazil.