South of Minas' transition: cities formation and capitalism constitution in the transition of 19th Century

• Grant number: 10/17321-6
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: February 01, 2011
• End date: January 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Macchione Saes
• Grantee: Alexandre Macchione Saes
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project "South of Minas' transition" wants to study the economic changes occurring in major urban cities in the south of Minas Gerais during the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. With the expansion of coffee production and the construction of railroads in the region after 1880, cities like Varginha, Três Corações and Campanha, who already had importance in making the trade supply - both for the mining regions in Minas Gerais as for capital of the Empire - and found a new economic dynamics. Thus, this project hopes to recover some of the crucial elements in the history of the South of Minas cities' that spurred the economic expansion and urban transformations in the early twentieth century.It is emphasized in the project period that Minas Gerais is currently undergoing a phase of "loss of substance" in the words of Francisco Iglesias, and possibly for that reason, a period that has received less attention from researchers. For the South of Minas that reality is the same, as the dynamic area of supply in the first half of the nineteenth century, was the object of research to unveil the joint market of the region with other economic centers. However, little is known how was the transformation of slave society and trade-related supply to a society that emerges in the substitution of slave labor and the expansion of the export economy. Thus, without ignoring the economic and social influences resulting from the proximity to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the project objective is to understand the peculiarities that formed the South of Minas in the early twentieth century. (AU)