It is bounded on the east and south by the South Atlantic Ocean. Rio de Janeiro has an area of 43, km 2 16, sq mi. Its capital is the city of Rio de Janeiro , which was the capital of the Portuguese Colony of Brazil from to , of the following United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves from to , and of later independent Brazil as a kingdom and republic from to The state is divided into 92 municipalities.
Rio de Janeiro is the smallest state by area in the Southeast macroregion and one of the smallest in Brazil. The original demonym for the State of Rio de Janeiro is fluminense , from Latin flumen, fluminis , meaning "river".
While carioca from Old Tupi is an older term, first attested in , fluminense was sanctioned in , twenty years after the city had become the capital of the Brazilian colonies, as the official demonym of the Royal Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro and subsequently of the Province of Rio de Janeiro. From through the Imperial Regime , carioca remained an unofficial term which other Brazilians used for the inhabitants of the city as well as the province.
During the first years of the Brazilian Republic, carioca came to be the name given to those who lived in the city's slums or a pejorative used to refer to the bureaucratic elite of the Federal District.
Carioca became the demonym of the city, while fluminense continues to be used for the state as a whole. European presence in Rio de Janeiro dates back to Between and , the territory was occupied by the French, who intended to install a colony, France Antarctique. In the 17th century, cattle raising and sugar cane cultivation stimulated the city's progress, which was definitively assured when the port started to export gold extracted from Minas Gerais in the 18th century.
