Vivre à St. Paul: the French immigrants living in the city of São Paulo during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Author(s)

Vanessa dos Santos Bodstein Bivar

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2008-02-14

Examining board members

Eni de Mesquita Samara; Carlos de Almeida Prado Bacellar; Fernando Tadeu de Miranda Borges; Nanci Leonzo; Lená Medeiros de Menezes

• Advisor: Eni de Mesquita Samara

Abstract

The core of this thesis was to study the French immigrants living in the city of São Paulo during the second half of the nineteenth century. Notwithstanding their quantitative minority compared with other migratory currents such as that of Italian people, they were qualitatively relevant in a certain moment during which there was a pressing propagation of French influence. Almanacs and newspapers displayed plenty of French people\'s names and commercial business. This reflected an spontaneous immigration wave and its individual trait, which, above all, turned to urban occupations. Although many of the names most known to history have been engineers, painters, medical doctors, all with specialized or technical knowledge, most of the emmigrated were ordinary people who had to improvise the parts they played to attain their daily survival. Even when they did not have the savoir-faire, the strategy of an immigrant was to merge into the French cultural universe, thus becoming a dressmaker, a cook, a hairdresser, a jeweler, a tailor or the owner of a hotel or restaurant - an array of duties that the town was demanding, thanks to the profits brought by the coffee agribusiness. Also within this context we attempted to unveil the commercial and consular relationships between Brazil and France, since an expanding commercial French network was being built to compete with English and German products, in which the French consul acted as mediator and the true link of the French interests inside this area. (AU)