The Department of Agriculture and three requests for land in Sergipe between 1887 and 1889

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze three land requests from Sergipe in Brazil. They went through the Agriculture Ministry. By doing this, we intend to discuss some historiography thesis about the 1850 Land Law. They tried to explain the agrarian politics of the Brazilian Empire in the 19th century by generalizing answers about those rules to anywhere in that empire. One historian among them, for example, negated any achievement of the 1850 Law by stating that the Brazilian Empire sold less land than the USA during the 19th century. Carvalho stated that the Law did not have any effect since it would have been created by a political elite and vetoed by the economic elite. We pointed out a more complex relationship between those groups. Also, we supported the idea of the 1850 Land Law was part of a longer process of property changing.