English, Irish and Irish-American Pioneer Settlers in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (review)

Brazil's plans to attract European immigrants began long before the end of slavery and the full transition to free labor in the 1880s. For nineteenth-century Brazilian elites, migrants were crucial elements in their project of modernization—as laborers, rural settlers, and agents of cultural and demographic Europeanization. Earlier plans were intended to attract agricultural workers and settlers, and showed a clear preference for northern Europeans. The imperial government invested in colonization schemes, sent officials on publicity trips to Europe, and established working relationships with promoters, agents, and recruiters. Publicists presented Brazil as an ideal destination that offered abundant land and generous policies for transportation and settlement. Recruiters were able to find families ready to leave Europe following the dream of land-ownership. Several towns in southern Brazil can trace their origins back to some of these early efforts. Many schemes, however, never left the drawing room, ended prematurely, or failed. As this books shows, there was much more to the equation than available land and willing migrants. Oliver Marshall analyzes the development and failure of a state-sponsored colonization scheme that sought to attract English and Irish settlers from England and the United States in the 1860s. By focusing on a failed scheme, the book unveils the web of conflicting interests at play and the economic, ecological, and sociopolitical limitations of nineteenth-century agricultural colonization policies.

Brazilian agents focused recruitment efforts on two groups: Irish families who had migrated to New York and the English Midlands, and industrial laborers in central and southwest England. Marshall argues that these were fertile grounds for recruitment in the early nineteenth century. Dissatisfaction grew among Irish and English workers as a result of the economic dislocation caused by industrialization and rural change. Economic, social, and religious discrimination heightened the difficulties of Irish workers. Far from unique, however, these conditions were common to other groups and to other parts of the world. Moreover, neither widespread dissatisfaction nor the presence of recruiters alone was sufficient for emigration. These schemes depended on the collaboration of government officials and agents with local mediators. Marshall's thorough account reveals a complex web that involved the participation of a prominent religious leader in the Irish agricultural colonization plan and the assistance of the National Agricultural Laborers' Union for the recruitment of English agricultural settlers. The destination of these migrants was three agricultural colonies in southeastern Brazil: Príncipe Dom Pedro (Santa Catarina), Cananéia (São Paulo), and Assunguy (Paraná).

These state-sponsored agricultural settlements ended in absolute failure. Migrants' dreams of a farming life in Brazil ended in indebtedness, isolation, destitution, and, for the lucky ones, repatriation or remigration. The experiment fell victim to badly executed policies and an entanglement of conflicting interests. The colonies shared common problems: difficult terrain, lack of roads, isolation from markets, and deficient infrastructure. Colonists had problems accessing promised plots of land, became trapped by debts, and were dependent on abusive or corrupt administrators. Lacking established communities and primary networks of assistance, their dependency on Brazilian and British authorities put clear limits to their autonomy. When these channels did not work, migrants had no alternative support networks to rely upon. Even though the analysis stresses the colonists' position as victims, it also shows how they managed to use the few resources at their disposal by petitioning Brazilian and British authorities, taking their discontent to the streets, and refusing to stay—even when this option meant risking their lives on their way back to Rio de Janeiro where they had to resort to begging in the streets. That most of the agricultural migrants who survived the experiment were able to return to Europe was the result of their resilience and pressure on the authorities that funded their repatriation.

This book presents a vivid account of the failed experiment of British agricultural migration to Brazil. Marshall considers...