Fronteira, mercado interno e crescimento da riqueza no Brasil, século XIX

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine the increase of internal market and the agrarian wealth in a frontier region during the beginning of the west settlement in São Paulo province, southeast Brazil, before the coffee expansion. The classical historiography about food crops have stressed that this economic sector was not important, but as we are going to show, it was so important that it increased the agrarian family wealth and it was a part of the internal market. The sources examined are the post-mortem inventories of those families who lived there. The agrarian units belonged to the frontier region of southeast Brazil, in São Paulo province. The years investigated begin on 1830 and goes through 1881 and are divided into two periods (1830-1851) and (1860-1881).