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Reviewed by:
  • Frontier Goiás, 1822–1889
  • Hal Langfur
Frontier Goiás, 1822–1889. By David McCreery. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006. Pp. 297. Maps. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. $55.00 cloth.

Many years ago, asked why he switched his research focus to Hispanic America after writing an important book on nineteenth-century rural Brazil, an eminent historian is said to have responded, “Because nothing ever happens in Brazil.” In his recent study of frontier Goiás, David McCreery has taken the opposite path with illuminating results, applying to central Brazil the formidable skills he first honed as a historian of rural Guatemala. Imperviousness to change remains a prominent theme.

The study explores the history of this remote agricultural and stock-raising province during Brazil’s imperial period, well after the lapse of the eighteenth-century gold-mining boom that first put Goiás on colonial maps. Little development occurred over the decades because, McCreery argues, “capitalism had scant need of Goiás: there was little there, whether labor, raw materials, or markets, that could not be obtained on equal or better terms elsewhere” (p. 17). The result, by and large, was stasis if not decay. Chapters examining such topics as state power, commerce, agriculture, and ranching lead repeatedly to dashed illusions and projects postponed. Unable to capture revenue from the region’s impoverished, preindustrial population, the state could not fund an effective bureaucracy, much less ambitious development schemes. Officials bowed to the power of local potentates whose influence, while enduring, rarely extended beyond the limits of their sizeable farms and ranches. As a consequence, Indians, criminals, and runaway slaves “moved freely about the countryside with little fear of capture” (p. 58). Although Indian attacks and banditry periodically disrupted daily life, this frontier was not an especially violent one, certainly never violent enough to threaten even the scant control the state exercised. The limited reach of official clout meant that such potential antagonists found little need to mount serious challenges to constituted authority.

A perennial plan to develop trade and expand settlement along the Araguaia River could serve as a metaphor for provincial development. The effort “stirred fantasies among the inhabitants of Goiás far out of proportion to its real potential” (p. 103). Agriculture and ranching failed to yield the profits necessary for economic dynamism. Few peasant producers owned the small plots of land on which they cultivated subsistence crops. Transportation expenses hampered attempts to tap into distant markets for foodstuffs. Slave labor declined over the course of the century, and rudimentary agricultural techniques persisted out of practical necessity rather than, as contemporary critics alleged, a regional proclivity for backwardness, ignorance, or apathy. In this sluggish milieu, with abundant land and scarce labor, stock raising emerged as the great hope to restore the lost prosperity of the mining era. Throughout the century, however, the cattle industry “remained remarkably simple in its techniques and low-quality in its product and would have been easily recognizable [End Page 289] to a colonial rancher” (p. 135). In this realm too, local markets could barely sustain innovation and expansion, although halting modernization occurred in the south of the province. Even the land conflicts characteristic of most frontier settings were subdued in Goiás because of its modest population and sprawling territory.

To his credit, the McCreery persisted in the face of such historical inertia. Even if little changed, a great deal can be learned from studying this frontier society as it struggled to sustain itself “on the edge of the modern world” (p. 1). Acknowledging that his contribution may lie more in describing that society than defending a thesis, McCreery elucidates much that has remained indistinct about the settlement of Brazil’s vast interior. His discussion of agriculture helps clarify, for instance, the predicaments of agregados, omnipresent free dependants who lived on large holdings throughout rural Brazil. His examination of ranching offers intriguing discoveries about the endless search for salt, the struggle against pests and predators, the activities of rustlers, and the ravages of parasites. A chapter devoted to land provides a meticulous analysis of the effects of the Land Law of 1850, which established new regulations governing public lands, squatting...

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