Over the last several decades, Brazil has emerged as a key player in global debates centered on the growth of commercial agriculture and its environmental consequences. In Brazil, cattle ranching and soybean production have exploded in previously isolated regions such as the Amazon and the cerrado. While the environmental impacts of these industries are well known, the histories of frontier expansion and territorial integration that facilitated their growth are still poorly understood. In this book, Sandro Dutra e Silva uses a case study of a microregion known as Mato Grosso de Goiás to examine the history of frontier expansion in central Brazil during the first half of the twentieth century. It is a significant contribution to an emerging literature on the history of state-led frontier expansion in twentieth-century Brazil.
Dutra e Silva organizes his study around the concept of the frontier and its multiple meanings. While he engages with...
