Amazonas Province (Brazil)

Amazonas Province Provínicia do Amazonas
Flag of Amazonas Flag Coat of arms from Empire of Brazil
Location of Amazonas
Status		Province
Capital		Manaus
Religion		Roman Catholic
Government		Constitutional monarchy
Currency		Real

File:Brazil Provinces 1889.svg

The Empire of Brazil, c. 1889.

Amazonas Province was one of the provinces of the Empire of Brazil. It was created in 1850 from territory of Grão-Pará Province.

History

Originally presented in 1826 by Dom Romualdo Antônio de Seixas, a member of parliament for Pará, the project to create the province of Rio Negro was debated and postponed indefinitely in 1828. The strategy used for this was to ask the government for information on the subject under discussion, making the sending of more documents a condition for the debates to continue. As the government rarely sent them, the issue was usually forgotten without the need to vote on it.

In 1839, however, a new proposal presented by João Cândido de Deus e Silva, also representing Pará, revived the idea, which was approved by the deputies in a vote in 1843. During these debates, the name of the new province to be created was changed to Amazonas, by an amendment tabled by Bernardo de Sousa Franco, from Pará.

In 1850, the bill was debated in the Senate along with another, which envisaged the creation of the province of Curitiba (later Paraná), and was approved and sent for imperial sanction within a few days — the proposal for the new province in the south of the Empire, in turn, was approved and sent to be debated in the Chamber of Deputies. In the same year, the new province was created by Law 982, of 5 September, and its first president was João Batista de Figueiredo Tenreiro Aranha, from Pará.

In 1889 it became the State of Amazonas.