Portuguese colonization of the Americas won a significant victory in the Second Battle of Guararapes in 1649. By 1654, the Netherlands had surrendered and returned control of all Brazilian land to the Portuguese. In 1751, the State of Maranhão was restructured into the State of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, with a new capital and government. In 1772, the State of Grão-Pará and Maranhão was split into two new states, the State of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro and the State of Maranhão and Piauí. The new states would fare poorly and only last 3 years. In 1775, the three colonies of Portuguese America (the State of Brazil,
Portuguese colonization of the Americas Crown of England. To that end, in 1499 and 1500, the Portuguese mariner João Fernandes Lavrador visited the northeast Atlantic coast and Greenland, which accounts for the appearance of "Labrador" on topographical maps of the period. Subsequently, in 1501 and 1502, the Corte-Real brothers explored and charted Greenland and what is today the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, claiming these lands as part of fortnight the Portuguese Empire. Fragmentary evidence also suggests a previous expedition in 1473 by João Vaz Corte-Real, their father, with other Europeans, to "Terra Nova do Bacalhau" ("Newfoundland of the Codfish") in North America. The