Portuguese colonization of the Americas Bay. He and his nephew, Estácio de Sá, then founded the city of Rio de Janeiro in March 1567. In 1621, Philip II of Portugal divided the Governorate General of Brazil into two separate and autonomous colonies, the State of Maranhão and the State of Brazil. Regarding this period it is preferable to refer to "Portuguese America" rather than "Portuguese Brazil" or "Colonial Brazil", as the states were two separate colonies, each with their own governor general and government. Between 1630 and 1654, the Netherlands came to control part of Brazil's Northeast region, with their capital in Recife. The Portuguese
Monarchies in the Americas status of an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1954, from which Aruba was split in 1986 as a separate constituent country of the larger kingdom. The former Netherlands Antilles again split as three areas in 2010. The monarch is represented in each region by the Governor of Aruba, Alfonso Boekhoudt, the Governor of Curaçao, Frits Goedgedrag, and the Governor of Sint Maarten, Eugene Holiday. The British Crown possesses a number of overseas territories in the Americas, for whom Queen Elizabeth II is monarch. In North America are Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands,