The Business of Peopling: Colonization and Politics in Imperial Brazil, 1822-1860

This dissertation examines the emergence of directed migrations as a niche market in post-independence Brazil. From 1822 to the consolidation of a government bureaucracy in charge of colonization in the 1860s in the midst of reports of abuses against colonos, migration and settlement policies in the Brazilian Empire marched in lockstep with private initiatives. Colonization proponents continuously approached government with plans to import and settle foreign workers and with requests for privileges they deemed necessary for the success of such enterprises. Increasingly, the Brazilian government began to show preference for firms and companies making such requests rather than for individuals. For this reason, this dissertation pays special attention to the interplay between private colonization companies and the Brazilian Empire's political establishment. The trajectories of colonization entrepreneurs and the debates around their proposals demonstrate that colonization was not merely a slave-substitution scheme but a for-profit endeavor whose promoters decisively influenced policy-making by means of the revolving door that existed between government and private colonization pursuits. This dissertation is based on archival research in England, Portugal and Brazil. It uses diplomatic correspondence, legislative debates, emigration propaganda, company prospectuses and newspapers among other manuscript and newly digitized sources to demonstrate that early nineteenth-century migrations to Brazil were simultaneously a political tool and a logistical challenge for a the fledgling Brazilian government. While most of the scholarship on migration focuses on the later decades of the century when slavery had significantly weakened, this dissertation argues that colonization was not about slavery but rather about a host of policy issues central to the consolidation of Brazilian sovereignty, from land regulation and military recruitment to international commercial partnerships and territorial defense. Moreover, the Brazilian government's experiments with migrant reception protocols often designed by private parties from the 1830s on demonstrates that the policies surrounding early nineteenth-century migrations served as crucial precedents for the reception of migrants arriving to Brazil in record numbers after 1870. This dissertation engages the political history of Imperial Brazil by using colonization as a lens to examine the Brazilian government's efforts to organize its territory and population by engaging with ad hoc colonization proponents and companies. This public-private partnership provided Brazilian statesmen with necessary learning in the long road to a cogent peopling policy punctuated by regime changes and successive crises.