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The Social and Economic Integration of Portuguese Immigrants in Brazil in the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Herbert S. Klein
Herbert S. Klein
Affiliation:
Professor of History at Columbia University.
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Extract

Like most of the peripheral countries of Europe in the nineteenth century, Portugal experienced population growth, agricultural expansion and even serious industrial development. By mid-century, in fact, it compared reasonably well in basic economic indices with most comparable late industrialising European countries. Although Portugal continued to develop in the second half of the century, its economy did not grow as rapidly as the rest of Europe and by the end of the century it had fallen seriously behind, becoming one of the poorest societies on the continent. This relative backwardness had several causes. Severe problems of land distribution affected the ability of national agriculture to modernise rapidly, especially in the densely populated north where minifundia land holdings predominated. Portugal's important wine industry was modernised but in only one sector and this sector could not expand its international markets.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , May 1991 , pp. 309 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 Portugal's Gross National Product (GNP) in 1860 was 92% of Italy's, and 93% of Denmark's, being overall just 86% of that achieved in the most advanced industrial countries of Europe. Reis, Jaime, ‘O atraso económico português em perspectiva histórica (1860–1913)’, Análise Social (Lisbon), vol. 20, no. 1 (80) (1984), p. 7.Google Scholar

2 By 1913 its GNP was one third of Denmark's, two thirds of Italy's and only 45% of that of the advanced industrial countries. Moreover, this situation worsened in the remainder of the twentieth century and by 1975 its GNP was just 38% of that of the advanced countries. Ibid.

3 A good review of this debate is found in Lains, Pedro, ‘La agricultura y la industria en el crecimiento económico portugués (1850–1913)’, Revista de Historia Económica (Madrid), 7:3 (1989)Google Scholar, which summarises many of the author's important articles in the Portuguese journal Análise Social. The major work on nineteenth-century developments in agriculture is the study by Justino, David, Aformação do espaço económico nacional, Portugal 1810–1913 (2 vols.; Lisbon, 1988)Google Scholar; and that on industrialisation, is Reis, Jaime, ‘A industrialização num país de desenvolvimento lento e tardio: Portugal, 1870–1913’, Análise Social, vol. 23, no. 2 (96) (1987).Google Scholar

4 See Bacci, Massimo Livi, A Century of Portuguese Fertility (Princeton, 1971), ch. 2.Google Scholar; and Lagos, Mário, A natalidade portuguesa, premissas demográficas (Lisbon, 1979).Google Scholar

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6 The districts from Leiria (which is just south of Coimbra on the coast) to the north (except for the eastern district of Castelo Branco) all averaged an annual migration rate in the period 1900–60 of 3.5 or above per 1000 resident population— with the highest being Braganza at 8.4 and Guarda, Viseu and Aveiro all being above 7.0. The islands were even higher—all above 7 per thousand, the leader being Ponta Delgado at 10.3. Overall the rate was 4.7 annual migrants for every 1000 residents for all of Portugal. Livi Bacci, A Century of Portuguese Fertility, p. 33.

7 These data, and those used for Fig. I, come from the recalculations of the official data done by Leite, , ‘Emigração portuguesa’, pp. 478–80.Google Scholar

8 Portugal, , Ministerio das Fazendas, Direcção Geral da Estatística, Anuário estatístico de Portugal, 1908, 1909 e 1910 (2 vols.; Lisbon, 1914), vol. 1, pp. 74–5.Google Scholar Of the 250,000 or more Portuguese who migrated to the United States, some 65–70% came from the Azores. Continental migrants were only important in the early 1910s and again in the early 1920s. Madeirans were more split, with about half migrating to Brazil and the rest going to the U.S.A. Finally, there was a significant contribution of black Cabo Verde islanders to the North American bound Portuguese migration. Leo Pap, The Portuguese-Americans (Boston, 1981), p. 36.

9 Serrão, Joel, A emigração portuguesa, sondagem histórica (3rd edn., Lisbon, 1977), p. 43.Google Scholar The figures vary from 93% in 1901–11, to 67% in 1921–30. It should also be noted that no two Portuguese authors provide exactly the same series. This is because of the confusion of even the official statistics and their constant revisions. Thus, in the publications of the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (I.N.E.) of Portugal (and its predecessor agencies) it is not always clear if the totals include the Azores, Madeira and Cabo Verde, or just the continent. Moreover, the I.N.E., especially in the last few years, has been revising many of its ‘retrospective’ statistical series, thus providing slightly different sets even for pre–1950 numbers.

10 The correlation coefficient (maximum 1.0) between Portuguese emigrants leaving Portugal and Portuguese immigrants arriving in Brazil was a high 0.9291 (1855–1950). But this correlation turns sharply negative after 1950, to— 0.5801 (1950–72). The legal emigration figures indicate that American-bound migrants represented a minimum of 80% of all migrants until 1961, when continental Europe finally became an important destination (see Arroteia, Jorge Carvalho, A emigração portuguesa—suas origens e distribuição (Lisbon, 1983), p. 113).Google Scholar Equally, the entrance of Canada and Venezuela as major centres of absorption in the 1950s was beginning to have its impact even in the flow of migrants to America. In fact, Sousa Ferreira's study of the French experience shows that this movement away from Brazil was probably even more important than these figures indicate, while other scholars date 1962 as the year when more Portuguese emigrants went to France alone than to Brazil, a trend that was never reversed. See Almeida, Carlos and Barreto, Antonio, Capitalismo e emigração em Portugal (Lisbon, 1970), p. 185.Google Scholar

11 The definitive study on this theme is the article by Leite, J. Costa, ‘Emigração portugesa: a lei e os números (1850–1914)’, Análise Social, vol. 23, no. 3 (97) (1987), pp. 463–80.Google Scholar

12 The districts in these five northern provinces averaged between 5 and 21 emigrants per 1,000 resident population in the 1886–1913 period, levels never matched by the southern provinces. Chaney, Rick Lamon, ‘The Economics of One Hundred Years of Emigration and Remittances in Portugal’, (PhD diss., Department of Economics, University of Illinois, 1984), p. 87.Google Scholar The islands had even higher rates. In the year 1912, for example, the islands averaged 27 immigrants per thousand population, as compared to 14 per thousand on the continent. While the interior northeastern district of Bragança (in Tras-os-Montes province) was Portugal's leading exporter with 60 migrants per thousand population, the Azorian island of Ponta Delgado was second with 41 per thousand. Finanças, Ministério das, Direcção Geral da Estatística, Movimento da População, Anos de 1908 a 1912 (Lisbon, 1914), p. 22.Google Scholar

13 Several authors stress the implantation of liberal concepts of land ownership in the post-1850 period, with the consequent privatisation of communal lands and strict enforcement of partible inheritance—especially after the civil code of 1867. All of this led to a rapid increase in land parcelisation. See Pereira, Miriam Halpern, Livre-Câmbio e desenvolvimento económico (2nd. edn., Lisbon, 1983), pp. 2.86ff.Google Scholar; Brettell, Caroline B., Migrate, Men who, Wait, Women who. Population and History in a Portuguese Parish (Princeton, 1986), p. 79Google Scholar; Cabral, Manuel Villaverde, Materiais para a história da questáo agrária em Portugal—séculos XIX e XX (Porto, 1974), p. 53.Google Scholar

14 Brettell, , Men who Migrate, Women who Wait, ch. 2.Google Scholar

15 Between 1944 and 1967 there was a net outflow of some 217,000 Portuguese emigrants to the African colonies, with the heaviest flows occurring in the 1950s and early 1960s. Almeida and Barreto, Capitalismo e emigração em Portugal, p. 168.

16 As Serrão and all other Portuguese commentators on immigration note, however, at least a third more Portuguese migrated illegally in any given period. Serrão, A emigração portuguesa, pp. 37–8. At times, this migration even exceeded the total volume of legal migrants, as in the case of France since 1950; see Ferreira, Eduardo Sousa, Origen e formas da emigração. O impacto da emigração sobre o desenvolvimento (Lisbon, 1976), pp. 51–73.Google Scholar Some illegal immigration even occurred to Brazil. In 1872, for example, the Portuguese consul in Rio de Janeiro estimated that, aside from the legal migrants, another 20% of the Portuguese arriving in the port were illegal migrants. Alencastro, Luiz Felipe de, ‘Proletários e escravos: imigrantes Portugueses e cativos africanos no Rio de Janeiro, 1850–1872’, Novos Estudos CEBRAP, no. 21 (07, 1988), p. 35.Google Scholar

17 It is estimated that of the 3.5 million Portuguese resident in foreign countries in 1978, France had 920,000, followed by South Africa with 660,000 and Brazil with 620,000. Venezuela was next with 350,000, followed by the U.S.A. with 318,000 and Canada 210,000. Arroteia, Jorge Carvalho, A emigração portuguesa—suas origens e distribuição (Lisbon, 1983), p. 132.Google Scholar

18 Eltis, David, ‘The Nineteenth Century Transatlantic Slave Trade, An Annual Time Series of Imports into the Americas broken down by Region’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 67, no. 1 (1987), Table V, p. 136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 In her survey of the Portuguese migrants, Ann Pescatello found that they were ‘primarily in financial activities as middlemen, commissarios and entrepreneurs; as producers or distributors of export/import volume; and in the most significant numbers as retailers…’. Pescatello, Ann Marie, ‘Both Ends of the Journey: An Historical Study of Migration and Change in Brazil and Portugal, 1889–1914’, (PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 1970), p. 154.Google Scholar

20 Thus, for example, in the ‘Registro do movimento de imigrantes na Ilha das Flores’ in Rio de Janeiro for the years 1911 and 1912, almost all Portuguese migrants coming on ships from Porto (Lexões), Lisbon and the islands were bringing in subsidised agriculturalists, almost all in family groups and with a quite even balance of sexes. See Nacional, Arquivo (Rio de Janeiro), ‘Entrada de Estrangeiros’, livros 100 & 103.Google Scholar

21 Even as late as 1887, the second most important occupation of the 16,932 Portuguese who migrated in that year and whose occupation was known was that of ‘caixeiros e negociantes’ [cashiers and merchants]. This represented 8% of the total, compared to 32% listed as ‘trabalhadores rurais, jornaleiros, lavradores e trabalhadores em geral’ [day labourers, rural workers, and labourers and workers in general]. Martins, Oliveira, ‘A Emigração Portuguesa’ [1931], reprinted in Serrão, Joel (ed.), Testemunhos sobre a emigração portuguesa, antologia (Lisbon, 1976), pp. 122–3.Google Scholar

22 Though Azorian migrants arrived in Brazil throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it would appear that their primary area of migration from the 1820s onwards was the United States. Between 1869 and 1892, for example, 70% of the 39,000 Portuguese who migrated to the United States came from the islands. Ferenzci, Imre and Willcox, Walter F., International Migrations—Statistics (National Bureau of Economic Research, vol. 14 [New York, 1929]), Vol. 1, pp. 378–429.Google Scholar

23 A typical contract is reproduced in Cruz, Maria Antonieta, ‘Agruras dos emigrantes Portugueses no Brasil’, Revista de História (Porto), vol. 7 (1986–7), pp. 129–31.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that this contract, which was for agricultural labour, specifically excluded work in the sugar plantations. Abuses of these contracts obviously occurred, though the legal standard seems to have been 18 months everywhere; see Benis, Maria Ioannis, ‘A emigração de 1856 a 1875 vista de Vianna do Castelo’, Revista de História Econômica e Social (Lisbon), vol. 3 (01.–06. 1979), p. 88.Google Scholar

24 See Alencastro, , ‘Proletários e escravos’, pp. 36ff.Google Scholar Brettell calculates that in the 1850s and 1860s third class passage to Brazil on the cheapest Portuguese steamships cost 33,000 reis, whereas daily urban wages in Portugal varied from 300 reis for skilled workers to 200 reis for unskilled labourers. Brettell, Men who Migrate, Women who Wait, p. 90.

25 Lobo, Eulália Maria Lahmeyer, Historia do Rio de Janeiro (2 vols.; Rio de Janeiro, 1978), Vol. 1, pp. 284–9.Google Scholar

26 Alencastro, , ‘Proletários e escravos’, p. 34.Google Scholar

27 Recenseamento geral…do Brazil em 31 de dezembro de 1890—Distrito Federal (Rio de Janeiro, 1895), pp. 232–3.Google Scholar

28 Brazil, , Recenseamento do Rio de Janeiro (Distrito Federal) realizado em 20 de setembro de 1906 (Rio de Janeiro, 1907), pp. 126–7.Google Scholar

29 Some support for this is found in the census of the population of the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1906. The Portuguese born residents had by far the highest percentage of males of any major group in the city (with a ratio of 320 males for every 100 females). This compares to a sex ratio of 266 for all foreign born residents, and the city's overall rate of 131 males per 100 females. Recenseamento do Rio de Janeiro (Distrito Federal) realizado em 20 de Setembro de 1906 (Rio de Janeiro, 1907), pp. 126–7.Google Scholar

30 Martins, , ‘A Emigração Portuguesa’, pp. 117–22.Google Scholar He found that in Madeira and the Islands this correlation did not hold as well as in the Continental provinces.

31 Of the Japanese marrying between 1908 and 1962, only 3% of the 38,729 males, and 0.3% of the 30,205 Japanese women marrying in this period, chose non-Japanese partners. Even children of immigrants maintained this characteristic, with a survey of 1958–62 reporting only 18% of the male children of Japanese parents marrying out, and only 8% of the second generation women doing so. See Comissão de Recenseamento da Colônia Japonesa, , The Japanese Immigrant in Brazil (Tokyo, 1964), p. 356, table 276.Google Scholar

32 Federal, Prefeitura do Distrito, Anuário Estatística do Distrito Federal, Ano 10 (1946) (Rio de Janeiro, 1947), Vol. 1, p. 53.Google Scholar

33 Fausto, Boris, Crime e cotidiano, a criminalidade em São Paulo (1880–1924) (São Paulo, 1984), p. 62.Google Scholar

34 Paulo, São, Repartição de Estatística e Archivo do Estado, Anuario Estatístico de São Paulo, 1900, pp. 108–9Google Scholar [hereafter cited as AESP]; AESP, 1901, I, pp. 158–9; AESP, 1902, I, pp. 102–3; AESP, 1903, pp. 96–7; AESP, 1904, I, pp. 82–115; AESP, 1905, I, pp. 90–1; AESP, 1906, I, pp. 84–5; AESP, 1907, I, p. 77; AESP, 1908, I, pp. 90–1; AESP, 1909, I, pp. 65, 69; AESP, 1910, I, pp. 58–9.

35 Sposati, Aldaiza de Oliveira (ed.), Memórias de Higene e Saüde Municipal (São Paulo: Secretaria Municipal de Higiene e Saúde/Secretaria Municipal de Cultura, 1985), p. 34.Google Scholar

36 AESP, 1910, Vol. II, pp. 256–77.

37 Anuaria Estatística do Brazil, 1907–1912, vol. III, pp. 565–7. In Rio de Janeiro in 1919 exclusive Portuguese worker associations were common. See the census of these associations undertaken by the Federal, Prefeitura do Distrito, Assistência público e privada no Rio de Janeiro (Brazil): História e estatística (Rio de Janeiro, 1922)Google Scholar, unnumbered table at the end of the volume, entitled ‘Associações Mútuas e de Beneficéncia…’.

38 In total there were some 16 Benevolent and Mutual Aid societies founded by the Portuguese in the state of São Paulo by the 1910s, with those in Campinas and the capital being the largest. AESP, 1915, Vol. I, pp. 370ff. There was also an active sports programme maintained by the community and their teams eventually became professionally organised by the mid-twentieth century.

39 In 1940 for the entire country, all major foreign born farmers—except the Portuguese—had estates whose average value per hectare was higher than the native born population. Whereas the 1.4 million Brazilian born farmers had average farm values of 179 cruzeiros (Cr$) per hectare, and the Portuguese Cr$ 176, the Italians averaged Cr$ 410, the Spaniards Cr$ 381 and the Japanese a high Cr$ 560. Recenseamento Geral do Brasil (1° de Setembro de 1940), ‘Série Nacional’, Vol. III, pp. 14–17.

40 Paulo, São, Diretoria de Estatística, Indústria e Comércio, Estatística Industrial 1938 e 1939 (São Paulo, 1941)Google Scholar, Tables 31 and 35 for the census taken from Nov. 1940 to March 1941.

41 Pereira, Luis Carlos Bresser, Empresários e administradores no Brazil (São Paulo, 1974), pp. 73Google Scholar, Table XIII, 78, Table XVI; and pp. 198–200 and Appendix Table 4.

42 ‘Condiçoes de trabalho na indústria textil do estado de São Paulo’, São Paulo, Secretatia da Agricultura, Comércio e Obras Publicas, Boletim do Departamento Estadual do Trabalho, Ano 1, nos. 1–2 (1911–2), pp. 74–5.

43 Ibid., pp. 120–1.

44 The São Paulo Tramways, Light & Power Company, Employment Bureau, Annual Report for 1930, table 9. This typescript report is found in the archives of Electropaulo, Departamento de Patrimonio Histórico, São Paulo. This figure also included the workers in the subsidiary companies owned by this combined tramway and power generating Canadian monopoly. Most of the Portuguese workers were in labouring positions earning hourly salaries (as opposed to monthly office workers) and most were concentrated in such occupations as conductors, motormen and labourers.

45 Albuquerque, Marli Moreira de, ‘Trabalho e Conflito no Porto de Rio de Janeiro (1904–1920)’, (MA thesis, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niteroi, 1983), p. 66.Google Scholar

46 Keremitsis, Eileen, ‘Workers and Industrialization in Rio de Janeiro, 1870–1930’, (PhD thesis, Department of History, Columbia University, 1982), pp. 72, 135.Google Scholar

47 Weid, Elisabeth von der and Bastos, Ana María Rodrigues, O fio da meada. Estratégia de expansão de uma indústria têxtil, Companhia América Fabril, 1878–1930 (Rio de Janeiro, 1986), p. 223.Google Scholar

48 Maram, Sheldon Leslie, Anarquistas, imigrantes e o movimento operário brasileiro, 1890–1920 (Rio de Janeiro, 1979), pp. 20–1, 42.Google Scholar

49 Brettell, , Men who Migrate, Women who Wait, p. 70.Google Scholar

50 Alencastro, , ‘Proletários e escravos’, p. 35.Google Scholar

51 Portugal, , Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Anuário Estatístico, 1965, Vol. 1, tabela 17, p. 22.Google Scholar

52 Levy, María Stella Ferreira, ‘O papel da migração internacional na evolução da população brasileira (1872–1972)’, Revista de Saúde Pública, Vol. 8, Suppl. (1974), pp. 62–7, and p. 86, tabela 12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 O'Neill, Brian Juan, Proprietários, lavradores e jornaleiros. Desigualdade social numa aldeia transmontana, 1870–1978 (Lisbon, 1984), p. 129.Google Scholar

54 Chaney, , ‘The Economics of One Hundred Years of Emigration’, p. 65.Google Scholar

55 Pereira, Miriam Halpern, A político portuguesa de emigração, 1850–1930 (Lisbon, 1981), p. 43.Google Scholar On average the value of these repatriated funds was equal to between 50% and 80% of the Portuguese commercial deficit. Chaney, ‘The Economics of One Hundred Years of Emigration’, p. 65. Also, unlike modern European repatriated savings of Portuguese emigrants, which are highly seasonal in nature due to the concentration of Portuguese in construction and their annual vacationing in Portugal, those savings coming from Brazil (before the elimination of such transfers by the Brazilian government in 1931) were not seasonally determined but spread throughout the year, suggesting emigrant involvement in non-seasonal work in Brazil. Moreover, estimates of the sources of these funds from Brazil in the 1920s shows that the Portuguese community in Rio de Janeiro produced by and large the bulk of these savings (or about half, compared to only a quarter coming from the state of São Paulo). Ibid., p. 72.