Brazilian state

State Estado (Portuguese)
Atlantic Ocean Pacific Ocean North Region Northeast Region Central-West Region Southeast Region South Region Acre Amazonas Pará Roraima Amapá Rondônia Maranhão Bahia Piauí Ceará Rio Grande do Norte Paraíba Pernambuco Alagoas Sergipe Mato Grosso Mato Grosso do Sul Federal District Goiás Minas Gerais São Paulo Rio de Janeiro Espírito Santo Paraná Santa Catarina Rio Grande do Sul Argentina Bolivia Chile Colombia French Guiana Guyana Paraguay Peru Suriname Uruguay Venezuela
Category	Federated state
Location	Federative Republic of Brazil
Number	26
Populations	496,936 (Roraima) – 44,035,304 (São Paulo)
Areas	21,910 km2 (8,459.6 sq mi) (Sergipe) – 1,570,800 km2 (606,470 sq mi) (Amazonas)
Government	State government
Subdivisions	Municipality

The Federative Republic of Brazil is a union of 27 Federative Units (Portuguese: Unidades Federativas, UF): 26 states (estados) and one federal district (distrito federal), where the federal capital, Brasília, is located. The states are generally based on historical, conventional borders which have developed over time. The Federal District is not formally a state, but shares some characteristics of a state as well as some of a municipality. The codes given below are defined in ISO 3166-2:BR.

The present states of Brazil trace their history directly to the captaincies established by Portugal following the Treaty of Tordesillas which divided part of South America between Portugal and Spain.

The first administrative divisions of Brazil were the hereditary captaincies (capitanias hereditárias), stretches of land granted by the Portuguese Crown to noblemen or merchants with a charter to colonize the land. As the map shows, these divisions generally followed lines of latitude. Each of the holders of these captaincies was referred to as a captain donatary (capitão donatário). These captaincies were to be passed from father to son, but the Crown retained the power to revoke them, which the King indeed did in the 16th century.

In 1549, the Portuguese Crown appointed Tomé de Sousa as the first governor-general of the vast Portuguese dominion in South America. This dominion overall became known as the State of Brazil (Estado do Brasil). In several periods of history, the northern half of the dominion was detached from the State of Brazil, becoming a separate entity known as the State of Maranhão (note that Maranhão by then referred not only to current Maranhão, but rather to the whole of the Amazon region; the name marã-nã in old Tupi language means "wide river", i.e. the Amazon River).