Länder mit einer kleineren Bevölkerung als der Bundesstaat São Paulo

I like New Zezland

With roughly the same population as Argentina, São Paulo’s GDP alone is actually bigger than theirs.

The state of São Paulo has a very specific development within Brazilian history thanks to the early 20th century. The state’s coffee barons were the masterminds of the [First Brazilian Republic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Brazilian_Republic), and as such created a system that benefited themselves. An essential part of that system was extreme federalism, which among other things allowed states to have separate immigration policies. São Paulo, which had one of the largest black populations in Brazil at the time due to the heavy use of slaves in coffee plantations until its abolition in 1888, though it necessary to [“whiten” its population as much as possible by incentivizing massive immigration from Europe,](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_politics_in_Brazil) the Middle East and even East Asia. This, coupled with the extreme decentralization, meant São Paulo begun to concentrate a lot more people than other states of Brazil and even begun a movement of massive [internal migration from poorer states into São Paulo.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_migration_in_Brazil) So there were a lot of moving parts in getting the state to be one of the largest South American polities, although that development still relied heavily in advantages and workforce being imported from the rest of Brazil.