Migrants and the Brazilian boom-city: Manaus from 1850 to 1940

The late nineteenth and early twentieth century Amazon rubber-boom fueled a rapid economic and population growth in Amazonian port societies. In Brazil, the revenue of rubber exports was used to counterbalance the cyclical fluctuations in the national government’s revenue from coffee exports. It also helped finance Rio de Janeiro’s urban reforms, and the construction of railroads in Brazil’s Southeast region. Limited at the beginning, by the 1880s international demands for rubber increased due to new processing technologies pioneered by companies such as Goodyear for a huge range of industrial products, from automotive tires to shoes. But in the first decade of the twentieth century, rubber prices started to fall, and in the Amazon region the industry declined sharply. Yet, despite the undeniable impact of this severe crisis, Manaus, a city situated in the heart of the world’s largest tropical rainforest, continued to expand. Over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century, migrants crucially strengthened the links between Manaus and both the Brazilian Northeast and the huge Amazon hinterland. These connections were key to the underlying processes associated with the expansion of the capital of Amazonas through time.This study provides a long-term analysis of how internal migrants helped to shape and reshape the capital of Amazonas throughout the First Brazilian Republic, and beyond. In Manaus, migrants engaged in daily activities, life projects and processes that (re) imagine the capital of Amazonas. In their ongoing engagement in producing the urban center of a large swath of Brazil’s Amazon, they also contributed to the social and commercial configuration of the entire region.LimitedAuthor requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste