This excellent study by Molly C. Ball deals with the period 1891–1930, a crucial moment in the history of the state and especially the city of São Paulo. Slavery's end in Brazil in 1888 and an acceleration of coffee activity in the state stimulated an intense migration process, initially from abroad and gradually complemented by national migrants. The state government, pressured by the coffee elite, promoted subsidized foreign immigration to replace slave labor. The state fully assumed the burden of transporting the immigrant and his family from their country of origin to São Paulo city, temporarily housing them at the Hospedaria de Imigrantes, and arranging their employment in the farms. Ball covers the expansion of São Paulo city, the formal and informal labor markets that emerged, the coffee economy's crisis in the First Republic's first years, World War I, and the transformations that occurred into the 1920s. According to Ball,...

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