Norte

The Amazon, which is most of Brazil's territory and almost none of its people. The northern region covers around forty-five per cent of the country and holds under a tenth of the population, in a basin containing the largest rainforest and the largest river by discharge on earth. Portuguese control was established through mission settlements and the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, which abandoned the Tordesillas line in favour of effective occupation and gave Brazil its western shape. The rubber boom from the 1870s made Manaus rich enough to build an opera house in the jungle and import European singers, until seeds smuggled to Kew in 1876 produced Asian plantations that destroyed the monopoly within a decade. Military governments from the 1960s built the Transamazonica and encouraged settlement with the slogan that this was land without people for people without land, which was untrue - indigenous peoples, some uncontacted, live throughout. Deforestation for cattle and soy has removed a substantial share of the forest. Chico Mendes was murdered in 1988 for organising rubber tappers. The Rio Negro and Solimoes meet at Manaus without mixing. The region covers seven states and around eighteen million people. Manaus is a free trade zone and the largest city in the interior. The Amazon discharges around a fifth of all river water reaching the oceans. Jau and the Central Amazon conservation complex are World Heritage sites. The state of Amazonas alone is larger than most countries, at over 1.5 million square kilometres. Belem, at the river mouth, hosted the 2025 climate conference. Acai and Brazil nuts are extractive exports.

• Existed: 1616 CE – present
• Type: Entity