[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] A piece of Immigration history in Brazil!

Marcia Oliveira marciaradis at msn.com
Fri Jan 2 19:23:54 PST 2009


Hi all,
 
This is just a little of immigration history in Brasil. 
 
Roughly speaking, the migratory movements in Brazil can be divided into five steps: -Initial occupation by nomadic peoples of Asian origin who populated the American continent between 10 and 12 thousand years, known as Indians; -Colonization, between 1500 and 1822, almost made only by Portuguese and slaves from sub-Saharan Africa; -Migration of population in southern Brazil, started in 1824 by German immigrants and which continued after 1875, with Italian immigrants; -Immigration as a source of labor for the coffee farms in the region of São Paulo, between the end of the XIX century and beginning of the XX century, with a predominance of large Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese; -Migration to urban centers with growing Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Japanese and Syrian-Lebanese, as well as several other nationalities; -More recent immigration, low population and little impact, begun in the 1970s.
 
 
After the independence of Brazil from Portugal, immigration has become part of the Imperial policy, as the South of Brazil(Parana, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul) continued depopulation and target of the greed of neighboring countries. 
The government started to encourage the establishment of colonies of settlers immigrantes.
The most important moment in the history of immigration in Brazil were initiated at the end of the XIX century. This process immigrants, encouraged by the government and the land lords of cofee, aimed use of European workers in coffee plantations.
 
The entry of African slaves in Brazil ended abruptly in 1850. The high infant mortality and the great disproportion of men compared to women was the reason of slave population to reproduce very slowly. Around 1880, the labor-slave was well-aged and the amount of labor-Brazilian, free or slave, was insufficient to meet the expansion of coffee plantations in São Paulo state.(southeast region).
In 1878, ten years before the Abolition of Slavery, the Agricultural Conference held in Rio de Janeiro brought coffee to discuss the issue of labor. They chose to press the government to facilitate the arrival of European immigrants.
The economic expansion and to a lesser extent, the need for colonization of virtually uninhabited regions of the country that encouraged the immigration to Brazil.
 Marcia


More information about the Ger-Poland-Volhynia mailing list