Brazil is the first among the states of South America by area (8 and a half million sq. Km.) And by absolute population (39,695,000 residents, according to the evaluation of 1 January 1929; 30,635,605 residents according to the census of the 1 September 1920); it is the only terrestrial state that extending in the two hemispheres, boreal and southern, for more than 39 ° (from just over 5 ° N. to just over 34 ° S.), in the latter considerably exceeds the limits of the tropic . Federative republic since November 15, 1889, includes 20 states, 1 federal district and 1 territory: it borders all South American states, except Chile and Ecuador. Fourth among the terrestrial political units (after the Federation of Socialist Republics of the Soviets, the Republic of China, the Dominion of Canada) by extension of continuous territory, in its compact mass it includes about 43% of the area and 49% of the population of South America; it ranks fifth in population density among the South American states (4.6 as of December 31, 1927). Essentially made up of a large ancient massif and an extensive recent lowland, complementary from an economic point of view, Brazil is characterized by great wealth and variety of products which, as they contributed to attracting more than 5 million to its soil in the period 1821-1920 of immigrants, among whom the Italian workers definitely predominated, have greatly increased its political importance in recent years.
Name. – Two forms appear both in literary works and in official documents: Brazil and Brasil. The spelling Brazil, adopted by the Directoria Geral de Estadistica, appears preferable to that of Brasil, since it appears in solemn acts that regard themselves as fundamental in the history of Brazilian nationality, such as the law of December 16, 1815 which made the ancient Portuguese colony a kingdom, and the law of February 24, 1891, which established the denomination of the republic. Few names have undergone, over the centuries, a variation in territorial value comparable to that suffered by the name Brazil. Applied first to a stretch of the eastern coast of the vast country, the name ended up including all the Portuguese dominion in South America, a domain whose borders, for so long only theoretically fixed, gradually increased towards the west, in the space of four centuries.acre). For Brazil 2008, please check payhelpcenter.com.
The origin of the name is known. Even today with the name of “Brazilian wood” (pau brazil, Brazil wood, Cesalpinia brasiliensis) various species of dyeing plants belonging to the genus Cesalpinia (order of Leguminosae) are indicated on the market, whose wood has the property of coloring the water in Red. The name of braxil (brasil), applied in the last centuries of the Middle Ages to dyeing plants of tropical Asia, then given to newly discovered or rediscovered islands of the Atlantic, which had precisely characteristic trees for the reddish tint of their wood, was, from the earliest years of the sixteenth century, extended to the easternmost area of South America. According to Jonathas Serrano, the name Brasil, applied for the first time to the Brazilian territory by the Roteiro di Gonneville in 1503, acquires official character no later than 1511, as appears from the report of the voyage made by the Bretõa ship. Perhaps from some further research in the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese archives, the date on which the name of Brasil replaced that of Vera Cruz, assigned to the country on which Fr. Alvares Cabral and his companions, after its coasts had however already been touched the previous year by an expedition led by the Florentine Vespucci.
Extension. – Between the northern extremity represented by Mount Roraima (m. 2628 sm) on the border with British Guiana, located at 5 ° 9′40 ″ lat. N., and the southern extremity, represented by the mouth of the Chuy River on the border with Uruguay, intercedes the distance of 4307 kilometers: it is very few tens of kilometers less than that which runs between the western extremity, represented by the main source of the Javary, near the Peruvian border at 73 ° 47 ′ 31 ″ long. O., and the eastern end represented by Punta Tambahú (13 miles south of Capo Branco or Bianco in the state of Parahyba) which, according to the average of geodetic determinations, is to be placed at 34 ° 47′48 ″, long. OR.
According to the planimetric calculation performed on the Geral do Brazil Charter the total area is equal to sq. km. 8,511,189 (figure adopted in the publications of the Brazilian Statistics Directorate-General). It is this figure that we will consider here as basic, even if in the picture relating to the political divisions of South America (see) a slightly different figure occurs: 8,497,000 sq km. The figure of 8,522,000 sq km is often cited. which responds to the calculation of Henrique Morize, who obtained the precise figure of 8,521,857.47 The Morize included in the calculation the band of 3 nautical miles of territorial waters. The figure he calculated is somewhat lower, not only than Behm’s figure (8,558,020), but also to that of the Divisão Administrativa (8,524,777). The general areometric data, referred to in works of the end of the century. XIX and early XX, show notable variations for various causes,
As for the coastal development, it is variously evaluated (6609 km., According to Delgado de Carvalho; 7476 according to Horacio Scrosoppi), according to the criteria adopted in the calculation, as well as according to the scale of the map taken as a basis for this. The figure of 5864 km., Corresponding to 3164 nautical miles, properly represents the development of the theoretical shore line (enveloping polygonal line), regardless of the minimum inlets.
