Historical story

The first hereditary captaincy of Brazil

The first hereditary captaincy that Brazil had was Fernando de Noronha. The islands were discovered by Gonçalo Coelho in 1503. In 1504, D.Manuel I established the division of the Brazilian colony into hereditary captaincies and then donated the archipelago to Fernão de Noronha, navigator and trader of redwood. The archipelago became known as the hereditary captaincy of São João, the first in the history of Brazil.

Before becoming a tourist and ecological paradise, Fernando de Noronha served as a detention center from 1737 to 1972, after that period, the place served as a detention only for political prisoners of the Estado Novo. In the Vargas era, during World War II, the archipelago became a federal territory, precisely to give Brazil strategic advantages in the context of the War, but in 1988 it was constituted as a district of the state of Pernambuco.