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The Brazilian Frontier in Comparative Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Martin T. Katzman
Martin T. Katzman
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Beyond influencing generations of scholarship in American history, the paradigm of Frederick Jackson Turner has stimulated a series of monographs and articles on the role of the frontier in the formation of other societies. A synthesis of this comparative research on these frontier societies has been ably undertaken by Gerhard and Mikesell. While there have been numerous articles in both English and Portuguese on the Brazilian frontier, these largely descriptive studies have not been systematically integrated into any conceptual framework, much less the comparative tradition inspired by the Turner thesis. In this essay, I propose to test the robustness of the frontier paradigm against some Brazilian frontier experiences

Type
Frontier Settlements
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 1975 , pp. 266 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1975

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References

The field research underlying this essay was undertaken during my tenure as a Ford Foundation Visiting Professor at the Institute of Economic Research, University of São Paulo, Brazil, 1970–72. I want to thank Professor Ray Allen Billington for his encouragement and comments on my efforts. All errors remain my responsibility.

1 Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt, 1920).Google Scholar

2 Gerhard, Dietrich, ‘The frontier in comparative view’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1 (03 1959), 205–29;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMikesell, Marvin, ‘Comparative studies in frontier history’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 50 (03 1960), 62–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Works which discuss frontier settlement as part of the process of general economic growth are Júnior, Caio Prado, Formaçāo do Brasil Contempoârneo (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1942)Google Scholar and História Economica do Brasil (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1945);Google Scholarde Holanda, Sérgio Buarque, Raizes do Brasil (Rio: Jose Olympio, 1968),Google Scholar and Furtado, Celso, The Economic Growth of Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968),Google Scholar which is drawn to a major extent from the works of Prado and Buarque. Morse, Richard (ed.), The Bandeirantes (New York: Knopf, 1967)Google Scholar presents documents of seventeenth-century explorations, but little analysis. The only comparative work is Moog, Vianna, Bandeirantes and Pioneers (New York: George Braziller, 1966) which attempts to relate the geographical and social conditions of pioneering to the subsequent development of Brazil and the United States in a highly speculative manner. References on specific frontiers are cited below.Google Scholar

4 See for example, Wiens, Herold J., China's March Toward the Tropics (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1954);Google ScholarLattimore, Owen, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (New York: American Geographical Society, 1951);Google ScholarTreadgold, Donald, The Great Siberian Migration (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957);CrossRefGoogle ScholarFitzpatrick, Brian, ‘The big man's frontier and Australian farming’, Agricultural History, 21 (01 1947), 8–12;Google ScholarAllen, H. C., Bush and Backwoods: A Comparison of the Frontier in Australia and the U.S. (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 1959):Google ScholarNeumark, S. Daniel, The South African Frontier: Economic Influences, 1652–1836 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1957);Google Scholar and Hancock, W. K., ‘Trek’, Economic History Review, 10 (04 1958), 331–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 In Canada, for example, between 1901 and 1951, the Prairie Provinces increased their acreage from 15 to 120 million, while the Maritimes decreased their acreage from 11 to 8 million.

6 The costs and returns evaluated by individuals in a market economy do not necessarily reflect ‘true’ social costs and benefits because of biases created by taxation, subsidies, tariffs, institutional restrictions on prices, or incorrect public investment decisions. These costs and returns also reflect the distribution of wealth and power; e.g., whether land in settled regions is monopolized by the few or whether ownership is distributed widely and equally. Factors which might lead to excessive frontier expansion in Brazil, from an economic point of view, are insufficient investment in agricultural research and development, subsidized truck fuel and railroad rates, and unequal land holding in the Northeast. Factors which may lead to insufficient frontier expansion are underinvestment in transportation facilities (roads, railroads), an inefficient scale of truckbuilding industry, and an overvalued exchange rate which inhibits non-coffee exports.

7 Helleiner, Gerald K., ‘Typology in development theory: the land surplus economy (Nigeria)’, Food Research Institute Studies, 6 (1966), #2, 181–94.Google ScholarBoserup, Ester, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, (Chicago: Aldine, 1963).Google Scholar

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9 Waibel, Leo, ‘European Colonization in Southern Brazil’, Geographical Review, 40 (10 1950), 529–47;CrossRefGoogle ScholarUrbana, Setor de Geografia, ‘Cidade e região no sudoeste Paranaense’, Revista Brasileira de Geografia, 32 (04/06 1970), 3–156.Google Scholar

10 Sjaastad, Larry, ‘The costs and returns to human migration,’ Journal of Political Economy 70 (supplement, 10 1962), 77–94;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Primack, Martin, ‘Land Clearing Costs and 19th century Techniques’, Journal of Economic History, 22 (12 1962), 484–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Parker, William N., ‘Productivity growth in American grain farming: an analysis of its 19th century sources’, in Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L. (eds.), Reinterpretations of American Economic History (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 175–86.Google Scholar

12 Shannon, Fred, ‘A post-mortem on the labor safety-valve doctrine’, Agricultural History, 19 (01 1945), 31–7;Google Scholar cf. Leff, Nathaniel, ‘Economic Development and Regional Inequality Origins of the Brazilian Case’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 86 (05 1972), 243–62;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, ‘Tropical exports and nineteenth century economic development’, Journal of Political Economy (1973).Google Scholar

13 Wharton, Clifton R. Jr, ‘Recent trends of output and efficiency in the agricultural production of Brazil, Minas Gerais, and São Paulo’, Inter-American Economic Affairs, 13 (Autumn 1959), 60–8;Google ScholarMoore, Clarence, ‘Recent developments in Brazilian Agriculture’, Journal of Political Economy, 64 (08 1956), 341–6;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Mandell, Paul I., ‘The development of the southern Goias Brasilia region: development in a land-rich economy’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1969, chap. 2. Estimates of recent trends in labor productivity in Brazilian agriculture are biased by the undercount of agricultural labor in the 1950 census.Google Scholar

14 Nicholls, William H., ‘Agriculture and the economic development of Brazil,’ in Saunders, John, ed. Modern Brazil (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1971), 215–45.Google Scholar

15 Baldwin, Robert, ‘Patterns of development in newly settled regions’, Manchester School of Economics and Social Studies, 24 (05 1956), 161–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCastro, Antonio de Barros, ‘Modelo Historico Latino Americano,’ Sete Ensaios Sobre a Economia Brasileira (São Paulo: Forense, 1972).Google Scholar

16 Kanel, Don, ‘Size of farm and economic development,’ Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 22 (04/06 1967), 26–44;Google ScholarDavid, Paul, ‘Mechanization of reaping in the antebellum Midwest’, in Rosovsky, Henry, ed. Industrialization in Two Systems (New York, John Wiley, 1966), 3–39.Google Scholar

17 Waibel, Leo, ‘The tropical plantation system’, Scientific Monthly, 52 (02 1941), 156–60;Google ScholarBaldwin, , op. cit.Google Scholar

18 Cheung, Steven N. S., The Theory of Share Tenancy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), presents considerable evidence that the form of the contractual dependency—fixed rents, sharecropping, fixed wages—can be predicted on the basis of crop yield variability and supervision costs of various cropregion combinations.Google Scholar

19 Cline, William, The Economic Consequences of a Land Reform in Brazil (The Hague: North-Holland, 1970).Google Scholar

20 See the discussion in Plantation Systems of the New World (Washington, D.C.: Pan American University, 1960).Google Scholar

21 Except for the New England colonies, and perhaps Pennsylvania, all lands in the original colonies were granted landlords with aristocratic pretensions. See Harris, Marshall, Origin of the Land Tenure System in the United States (Ames: Iowa State College, 1953).Google Scholar

22 Domar, Evsey, ‘The causes of slavery or serfdom’, Journal of Economic History, 30 (03 1970), 18–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Treadgold, , op. cit.Google Scholar

23 Caio Prado, Formação, raises the question why free labor flocked to North America but not to the tropics. Besides the climate and familiarity of the environment, North America's advantage lay in England's pauperized peasants, ejected by the Enclosures, which replaced labor-intensive wheat farming by land-intensive sheep grazing. Portugal on the other hand was practically depopulated by the fourteenth-century explorations.

24 The best discussions of the coffee frontier are Monbeig, Pierre, Pionniers et Planteurs de São Paulo, Cahiers de la Fondation Nationale de Sciences Politiques, 28 (1952);Google Scholar Antônio Delfim Neto, O Problema do Café no Brasil, Boletim No. 5, Economics Department, University of São Paulo, 1970; Graham, Richard, Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil, 1850–1914 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1968);CrossRefGoogle ScholarStein, Stanley J., Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1957);Google ScholarNormano, J. F., Brazil: A Study of Economic Types (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), Chap. 4.Google Scholar

25 On the use of influence and force to acquire land, see Dean, Warren, ‘Latifundia and land policy in nineteenth-century Brazil’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 51 (11 1971), 606–26;CrossRefGoogle ScholarStein, , op. cit.;Google ScholarCosta, Emilia Viotti da, Da Senzala à Colonia (São Paulo: Difusão Europeia, 1966), Chaps. 1 and 2.Google Scholar

26 da Costa, Viotti, loc.cit.Google Scholar Cf. Gallaway, J. H., ‘The last years of slavery on the sugar plantations of Northeast Brazil,’ Hispanic American Historical Review, 51 (11 1971), 586–605;CrossRefGoogle ScholarEisenberg, Peter, ‘Abolishing slavery: the process on Pernambuco's sugar plantations,’ Hispanic American Historical Review, (Nov. 1972), 580–97.Google Scholar

27 Leff, Nathaniel, ‘Economic development and regional inequalities’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 86 (05 1972), 243–62;CrossRefGoogle ScholarFernandes, Florestan, The Negro in Brazilian Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

28 Dean, Warren, The Industrialization of São Paulo, 1880–1945 (Austin: Univ. of Texas, 1969), suggests that the purchase of urban land by rural interests and rural land by urban interests may have helped to form a homogeneous outlook among planter, merchant, and industrialist. This sense of common interest may have saved the country from the necessity of a bloody bourgeois revolution, which might have broken the hierarchical class structure in the rural areas.Google Scholar

29 On the role of coffee planters in the abolition of slavery, see Graham, Richard, ‘Causes for the abolition of slavery in Brazil’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 46 (05 '66), 123–37;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Conrad, Robert, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850–1888 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).Google Scholar

30 Luz, Nicia Villela, A Luta Pela Industrializacao do Brasil, 1808–1930 (São Paulo: Difusão Europeia do Livro, 1961).Google ScholarSkidmore, Thomas, Politics in Brazil, 1930–1964 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

31 See Dozier, Craig, ‘Northern Parana, Brazil: Settlement and development of a recent frontier zone’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1954;Google Scholaridem, ‘Northern Paraná: an example of organized regional development’, Geographical Review, 46 (07 1956), 218–33;Google ScholarPades, Pedro Calil, ‘Formação de uma economia periférica: o caso paranaense’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Pontifical Universidade Catolica, São Paulo, 1970;Google ScholarNicholls, William H., ‘The agricultural frontier in modern Brazilian history; the state of Parana, 1920–65’, Revista Brasileira de Economia, 24 (10/12 1970), 64–92;Google ScholarWillems, Emilio, ‘The rise of a rural middle class in a frontier society’, in Roett, Riordon (ed.), Brazil in the Sixties (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1972), 325–44.Google Scholar

32 For background on Amazonian history, see Furtado, Celso, The Economic Growth of Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), chapter 23;Google ScholarWagley, Charles, Amazon Town (New York: Knopf, 1964);Google ScholarFaissol, Speridião, ‘Amazônia’, in Panorama Regional do Brasil, Instituto Brasileira de Geografia e Estatistica, 1969, 3–29;Google ScholarSantos, Roberto, ‘O equilibrio da firma aviadora e a signifiação econômico-institutional do aviamento’, Pará Desenvolvimento, 3 (Junho 1968), 9–30.Google Scholar

33 Ministerio da Agriculture, Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agraria, A Colonização no Brazil; Situaçãao Atual, Projeçoes, e Tendencias, 1971.

34 Cline op. cit. finds no significant economies of scale in northeastern agriculture, and shows that small farms utilize land more intensively than plantations.

35 I have compiled a file of such evictions reported in Sao Paulo newspapers. The major evictions include the followers of Zé Procopio in Goias in the early 1960s; squatters in the southwest Paraná right after the 1964 coup; and squatters who have lived in the Araguaia valley for 40 years, currently combatting a corporation attracted to their land by fiscal incentives.

36 Reynolds, Clark, The Mexican Economy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 134–60, 175–80.Google Scholar

37 Barraclough, Solon and Domike, Arthur, ‘Agrarian Structure in Seven Latin American countries’, Land Economics, 42 (11 1966), 408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Shannon, Fred, ‘The Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus’, American Historical Review, 41 (07 1936), 637–51;CrossRefGoogle ScholarGates, Paul W., ‘The Homestead Law in an Incongruous Land System’, American Historical Review, 41 (07 1936), 651–81;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBogue, Allen, From Prairie to Corn Belt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press);Google Scholaridem, ‘Profits and the Frontier Land Speculator’, Journal of Economic History, 17 (03 1957), 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Barraclough, and Domike, , loc. cit.Google Scholar