Land appropriation in Campinas in the 1860s and 1870s: the effects of the Land Law (1850) and the Mortgage Law (1864)

• Grant number: 23/05355-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2023
• End date: July 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Goyena da Silveira Soares
• Grantee: Ana Paula Souza Alves
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The proposed research project falls within the field of economic history, analyzing land appropriation in Campinas in the second half of the nineteenth-century. The study proposes to analyze the effects of the Land Law from 1850 and the Mortgage Law from 1864 in this process of land appropriation, in the period between 1860 and 1880, when the productive axis of the Brazilian Empire tended to move to the Western São Paulo. The initial hypothesis of this research is that these two laws contributed to the appropriation of land, providing legal security to land businesses in Campinas and enabling the transformation of land, therefore, into a marketable economic asset. Thus, they contributed to the consolidation of a local land market, which would be directly associated with the formation of a free labor market that was not exclusively provincial, since the process deprived peasants of land ownership, leaving them with the sale of their workforce. Using theoretical references that discuss the effectiveness of these laws, the research proposes to analyze the primary sources that record the purchase and sale of land in Campinas, as well as the subsequent mortgage assignment of land assets - both legal measures specific to the market formation of land. To this end, two methodologies are applied: the first is based on the serial analysis of real estate and mortgage records in order to, in the second, measure the degree of success, even if micro-historical, regarding the formation of a Campinas market of lands. At the end of the research, besides confirming or not the initial hypothesis, it is expected to identify the reasons that eventually led the productive classes of Campinas to sponsor both laws.