The Brazilian Northeast represents the first settlement zone created by the Portuguese conquerors, who started colonization from the northeastern coast, which favored the occupation due to the presence of better natural conditions, such as a vastly indented coastal portion, ideal for coastal navigation, and the flat relief close to the sea.
The cultivation of sugar cane, (which reached its peak between the end of the 16th century and the middle of the 17th century), based on the system Colony-Metropolis, structured the trade and development of northeastern cities, mainly on the coastline, currently known as Zona da Mata. Portugal expanded its sugar trade with resources invested mainly in Pernambuco, based on indigenous labor and foreign (Dutch) capital. To produce according to the colony's needs, African blacks were brought in. This system consolidated the agrarian structure that still prevails in the Northeast, marked by strong concentration of land and the influence of traditional oligarchies and families in political decisions and economical.
The sugar economy guided other activities, such as cattle raising (meat, transport, energy for the mills, tallow, firewood for the boilers), and this activity eventually expanded to areas of the sertão, constituting the basis of its economy. At the end of the 17th century, sugar production in the Antilles increased the supply of the product on the international market, dramatically lowering its price. With the decline in sugar production, cattle raising absorbed a large part of the population.
For almost three centuries (XVI to XVIII) the Northeast region concentrated most of the population and a large part of Brazil's wealth. The accumulation system based on sugarcane, unlike coffee in the Southeast, occurred at a time in which the Brazilian occupation represented the enrichment of the metropolis through the exploration of the Cologne. Although it is argued that in the state of São Paulo, wealth was concentrated with the Coffee Barons and did not provide a balance in the income distribution, such accumulation occurred in another historical context, post-Industrial Revolution, being used in the modernization of infrastructure and inducing the formation of a social class capable of investing in projects that have effectively installed in the territory Brazilian.
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On the other hand, extensive cattle raising was responsible, even during the 17th century, for the beginning of the occupation's interiorization in the Northeast. Away from the Zona da Mata so as not to compromise the sugarcane plantations, the cattle herd followed the Agreste – a transitory strip between the humid areas and the dry areas – until reaching the Sertão. The extensive Northeastern cattle-raising carried out in the Agreste and Sertão regions even attracted immigrants from São Paulo to the Northeast region. The figure of the sertanejo, a cowboy used to the extreme conditions imposed by the drought, exists to this day in several northeastern cities.
From the 19th century onwards, the Northeast began to take on the role of population disperser. Historically, the region has a high rate of emigration, due to the lack of infrastructure and projects for development that include the most popular strata, a situation aggravated by seasonal droughts and high concentration land ownership.
Julio César Lázaro da Silva
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Geography from Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP
Master in Human Geography from Universidade Estadual Paulista - UNESP
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
SILVA, Julius César Lázaro da. "Economic History of the Northeast Region"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/brasil/historia-economica-regiao-nordeste.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
