Proposals for lands of the young Brazilian Empire

liberals projects and the conservative reaction

Abstract

This paper analyzes three projects developed in the lands of the Empire of Brazil during the 1820s. Our goal is to discuss both jerked beef manufacturer Antonio Gonçalves Chaves’ liberal propositions to land legislation and José Bonifácio Andrada e Silva’s, intending to demonstrate the innovative character of such programs to the new Brazilian State, but also revealing – through a detailed analysis of their articles – their excluding character, taken as “democratic” at the time. The survey of Senator Silva Ferrão’s project – unpublished in the historiography of agricultural history – allows our discussion of the conservative principles and its prepositions to land policies. Finally, we conclude by arguing that both liberal and conservative projects did not address the main obstacle to the success of immigration policy in nineteenth-century Brazil: the absence of a wide distribution of land for poor families and immigrants.