Study highlights the networks that benefited from the transportation of immigrants

Study focuses on the formation of a network established to recruit workers from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.

By Karina Toledo

Agência FAPESP – As a result of the increasing migration of Europeans to the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries, a business network emerged on both sides of the Atlantic whose objective was to profit from the recruitment and transportation of laborers.

The phenomenon, found primarily in Italy and Brazil, was the subject of doctoral studies by historian Paulo Cesar Gonçalves at the Universidade de São Paulo School of Philosophy, Letters and Humanities (FFLCH-USP), which was supported by FAPESP funding.

That study led to the book Mercadores de Braços: Riqueza e acumulação na organização da emigração europeia para o Novo Mundo [Marketers of arms: Wealth and accumulation in the organization of European immigration to the New World], which was recently released by Alameda Casa Editorial with FAPESP funding through its Research Support-Publications division.

“The idea was to work through the immigration question under the lens of the people who organized the process: shipping lines, mostly Italian, and the immigrant recruiting agencies that emerged in São Paulo. I also mention the arrival of Spaniards and Portuguese in the book,” stated Gonçalves.

From the mid-1880s, when the Paulista government decided to subsidize the immigration of European laborers to harvest coffee, the process was centralized in the Sociedade Promotora de Imigração [Immigration Promotion Society]. The entity entered into contracts with recruiting agencies, one of the largest of which was Angelo Fiorita & Co.

In turn, these companies hired the Italian shipping lines to transport the immigrants, who were gathered in the countryside by emigration agents, to Brazil.

“The first contract was to bring 6,000 immigrants. As time passed, the numbers increased. Some contracts were for 60,000 workers,” stated Gonçalves.

In the beginning, transportation conditions were quite precarious and were even compared to those of slave trafficking conditions. “They used cargo ships adapted for passengers. This had very negative repercussions in Italy. Ship owners and emigration agents were frequently called white soul merchants or human flesh merchants.”

The first legislation to improve emigrant transport in Italy was passed in 1888, but only in 1901 did the Italian government establish strict parameters for regulating transport activity. The new legislation spurred the modernization of steam ships and industrial activity in northern Brazil.

“A certain minimum number of square meters per passenger was required, as well as the presence of a doctor on board and minimum travel speed. The price of tickets was controlled by the State as well as other measures,” stated Gonçalves.

The transportation of emigrants was fundamental to the modernization of the maritime fleet in Italy and for the transformation of family-owned shipping businesses into large shipping companies.