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Amazonas (pron. ) is the largest state of Brazil in area, located in the northern part of the country. Neighboring states are (from north clockwise) Roraima, Pará, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, Acre. It also borders Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. This includes the department Amazonas in Colombia, as well as the Amazonas State, Venezuela (it does not border the Peruvian Amazonas Region). History
The name "Amazonias" was given to the Amazon River by early Spanish explorers, who fought skirmishes with female Amerindian warriors that they named after the fierce mounted female warriors in Greek mythology. Another, less common version states that the term Amazon comes from a local Amerindian word, amassunu, which means "sounds of the waters". What is today Amazonas state was first taken control of after the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which essentially divided the planet (excluding Europe) between the Spanish and the Portuguese, territories west of (approximately) 46° 37' W belonging to Spain, those east of that longitude, to Portugal. Originally, most of South America (except for a small part of the east coast of modern Brazil) was ceded to Spain. However, the Portuguese controlled the area in practicality, with numerous settlements and large numbers of Portuguese soldiers in the Brazil area. Spain officially handed over control of the region with the Treaty of Madrid in 1750. The state of Amazonas was officially created by Dom Pedro II in 1850. The state met an era of splendour in the 1850s, at the peak of rubber production and exports. However, the economic gain was largely thanks to great human suffering: untold thousands of enslaved Amerindian seringueiros (rubber tappers) died through disease and overwork. By the late 1800s, the Brazilian rubber monopoly was slowly dying, as British and Dutch plantations in South-East Asia were producing cheaper, superior quality rubber, and by 1900 the Amazonas state had fallen into serious economic decline because of this. It was not until the 1950s that federal government policy rescued the state from complete financial ruin. The state capital of Manaus had once been a rich city (it received street lighting and streetcars before London) but had largely fallen into disrepair since the end of the rubber boom. In 1967, the federal government implemented a plan to revive the city, and today the city is the financial centre of the region.
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