Paulistas

Paulistas are the inhabitants of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, and of its antecessor the Capitaincy of São Vicente, whose capital early shifted from the village of São Vicente to the one of São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga.

The early population of São Paulo consisted mainly of indigenous Amerindian allied either to the Portuguese settlers or to the French, who had come in search of Brazilwood and briefly undertook to settle as well. The Portuguese settlements were small, and the language used was the Língua Geral.

As the Bandeirantes gained power and the vice-kingdom of Brazil developed, Portuguese surpassed the Língua Geral and the Portuguese element predominated in the population, the Indians being either absorbed or killed, or expelled inland to the remaining Jesuit Reductions in Brazil or Paraguay. But the province of São Paulo, enlarged by the Bandeiras to include Mato Grosso, Goiás, Paraná and Santa Catarina, remained undeveloped, having neither the gold of Minas Gerais nor the sugar cane of Pernambuco. As a consequence, it did not receive the same influx of black slaves during the colonial times as the more prosperous provinces of Brazil. Nevertheless, this ethnicity increased substantially in São Paulo during the Brazilian Empire, as they were transferred from declining regions of Brazil (such as the Northeast) to work in coffee plantations.

The economic development of São Paulo only really began to develop in earnest with the founding of coffee plantations in the nineteenth century, when the slave trade began its decline. Portuguese imperial policies were instituted, which mandated that the population be increased through white immigration and that the borders be secured, in order to keep Brazil as European as possible. As a result, São Paulo manned its plantations with European and, later, Japanese and Arab immigrants, who formed the backbone of Paulista entrepreneurship that currently distinguishes their state in Brazil. The main immigrants were Italians, but Germans, Spaniards, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians and Armenians, among others, can also be found, as well as some US Southerners escaping from the US Civil War and the abolition of slavery in their native country.

As a curiosity, the influx of Italians was so large that during a period in the beginning of the 20th century the capital city of São Paulo had more Italian than Brazilian citizens, and the city developed a distinctively Italianised accent of Portuguese.