Entrepreneurs in the immigration sector: recruiters and colonizers in the process of colonization/immigration in Brazil (1850-1914)

• Grant number: 18/00335-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: May 01, 2018
• End date: October 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Oswaldo Mario Serra Truzzi
• Grantee: Patricia Bosenbecker
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Entrepreneurs of foreign or Brazilian origin who specialized in the agency and transportation of immigrants, as well as the colonizers, became entrepreneurs of the immigration sector and contributed significantly to the development of several sectors of the national economy, as well as profiting with their own interests and companies, colonies or factories, and has a role as a specific group still little discussed in the history of immigration from Europeans to Brazil. Thus, in an attempt to understand the role of these entrepreneurs of the immigration sector in Brazilian history, we propose to investigate the profile, the fields of action and the main configurations of these individuals as an economic group, reflecting on their scope and socio-political influence at the national level. In order to do so, we intend, in the first phase of the project, to create a database with small, medium and large entrepreneurs who built companies in Brazil and worked in one or more stages (recruitment, transportation, accommodation and installation of immigrant groups in Brazil) from the process of colonization/immigration in the period from 1850 until the beginning of the First World War. In the second phase of the project, we sought to evaluate in a more detailed way three individuals who are part of the group of great entrepreneurs in the sector, discussing their roles in the colonization process and their interconnections with national and international networks of entrepreneurs in this sector. (AU)