Summary

With Latin America's introduction into the global markets, they took up niches in certain economic sectors; one of those for Brazil was coffee. According to Celso Furtado, "The physical and chemical qualities of the soil permitted extensive coffee planting" (Problems 269). With this perfect land for coffee production they could make a vast amount of product to sell, they would go on to produce two-thirds of the worlds supply. These plantations unlike the sugar ones in the north were located in the south they used European labor which unlike slave labor wasn't free, this eventually leads to the fall of slavery. Furtado says,"In Brazil, where the spread of coffee over the São Paulo highlands and the influx of European immigrants hastened the collapse of the slave economy" (Problems 270). This would also lead to the creation of modern infrastructure and a domestic market; to support this economic growth they needed to allow in a ton of immigrants mainly from Europe and build up railroad access to allow all sort of goods to leave the country. this growth lead to population and economic growth. According Furtado, "In Brazil, the population increased from 10.1 million in 1872 to 17.3 million in 1900. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the rate of population increase in São Paulo was over 5 percent a year, while for the country as a whole it was under 2 percent. Nearly all the 610,000 immigrants entering Brazil during this decade went to the state of São Paulo. Between 1880 and 1910, the total length of railways increased from 3.4 to 21.3 thousand kilometers. Coffee exports, which were around 4 million 60-kilogram bags in 1880, rose to almost 10 million in 1900 and to over 16 million on the eve of the First World War, a total seldom surpassed in later years. In the same period, exports of cacao rose from 6,000 to 40,000 tons, and rubber exports from 7,000 to 40,000 tons"(Problems 270).