Name | Bahia |
Alt names | BA | |
Type | State |
Coordinates | 11°S 42°W |
Located in | Brazil |
- source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
- source: Family History Library Catalog
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Bahia (, ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro) and the 5th-largest by area. Bahia's capital is the city of Salvador (formerly known as "Cidade do São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos", literally "City of the Saint Savior of the Bay of All the Saints"), on a spit of land separating the Bay of All Saints from the Atlantic. Once a monarchial stronghold dominated by agricultural, slaving, and ranching interests, Bahia is now a predominantly working-class industrial and agricultural state. The state is home to 7% of the Brazilian population and produces 4.2% of the country's GDP.
History
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
The Portuguese Pedro Álvares Cabral sighted Monte Pascoal ("Easter Mountain") near Itamaraju and landed at what is now Porto Seguro on the southern coast of Bahia in 1500, claiming the territory for Portugal. In 1549, Portugal established the city of Salvador on a hill facing the Bay of All Saints. The city and surrounding captaincy served as an administrative capital of Portugal's colonies in the Americas until 1763. It remained the religious capital of Brazil's Roman Catholic hierarchy, with its archbishop serving as the national primate until 1907. Salvador holds the country's oldest cathedral and first medical college (1810), and an engineering school was established in 1899.
Bahia's captaincy was the first to fail, with its lands reverting to the Portuguese crown in 1549. While Portugal was united with Spain, the Dutch West India companies tried to conquer Bahia but was unsuccessful in the area, with Dutch Brazil restricted to the area from Pernambuco Northward.
Bahia was a center of sugarcane cultivation from the 16th to the 18th centuries and contains a number of historic towns, such as Cachoeira, dating from this era. Integral to the sugar economy was the importation of a vast number of African slaves: more than a third of all slaves taken from Africa were sent to Brazil, mostly to be processed in Bahia before being sent to work in plantations elsewhere in the country.
The state was the last area of the country to join the Empire of Brazil, as members in the local elite remained loyal to the Portuguese crown after the rest of the country proclaimed independence under on 7 September 1822. Control of the province was disputed in several battles, mostly in Pirajá, before the Portuguese were fully expelled on 2 July 1823. It became a Brazilian state in 1889.
Charles Darwin visited Bahia in 1832 on his famous voyage on the Beagle. In 1835, Bahia was the site of an urban slave revolt, the Malê Revolt of 1835 by the predominantly Muslim West African slaves at the time. The term malê was commonly used to refer to Muslims at the time from the Yoruba word imale. The revolt is particularly notable as the greatest slave rebellion in the history of the Bahia. Under the Empire, Bahia returned 14 deputies to the general assembly and 7 senators; its own provincial assembly consisted of 36 members. In the 19th century, cotton, coffee, and tobacco plantations joined those for sugarcane and the discovery of diamonds in 1844 led to large influx of "washers" until the still-larger deposits in South Africa came to light. A smaller boom hit Caetité in 1872 upon the discovery of amethysts there. The cattle industry of the interior led to the development of Feira de Santana before collapsing in a series of droughts.
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