Chapter 3 - Mass Migrations, 1880–1920

Summary

A New World Order

By the late 1800s the American republics could be divided into three categories – those rapidly filling with immigrants, those whose elites believed they could be filled with immigrants in spite of evidence to the contrary (i.e., few had settled), and those nations in which policymakers had deemed immigration a failure. Brazil was in the first group. Imperial power had declined, and landowners, especially in the prosperous and politically powerful coffee-growing state of São Paulo, had tightened their grip on the political and economic system.

Brazil’s size (larger than the continental United States) and its expanding economy meant that Europeans, North and South Americans, Asians, and Middle Easterners were increasingly willing, and sometimes eager, to accept the opportunity to resettle in Brazil. C. F. Van Delden Laërne, an employee of the Dutch Department of the Interior in Java who went to Brazil to report on coffee culture in 1884, spoke with many fazendeiros about immigration and found it

remarkable what a universal and i rm belief in a future immigration on a large scale exists among the born Brazilians, the sons of the land. To their minds it seems enough that they should will that immigration, in order to cause the stream of emigrants from all ends of the earth, l ow into Brazil. This belief is assuredly not founded on past experience; for the history of colonization there points to a very different conclusion.

In my opinion that faith is not based on any such grounds, but exclusively on the strikingly pronounced complacency with which the Brazilians regard their native land. I shall not say that they think it perfect in all respects; – far from that; – many – far too many of the higher classes I am told – sound the praises of their native land from the great cities of the Old World. But the praises and enthusiasm continue to be lavished on the immense treasures buried there in the lap of earth; on the incomparable beauty and unparalleled fertility of the land. [It has become] a favorite catchword to speak habitually of the rich, the favored Brazil, of the blessed land, of the blessed daughter of the Gospel!