| Description |
Inflated aspirations, evoked by a c0mplex of obstacles blocking imperial progress, accompanied Brazil's institution of military colonization. But neither legislative act nor investigative censure succeeded in stimulating sustained growth in those establishments because official interest faltered and available resources failed. Pedro II inherited an empire beset with a multitude of problems. Brazil's boundaries were ill defined. Distance and poor communications stymied efforts to protect national integrity and hindered efficient administration of so vast a polity. The economy was feeble, yet huge tracts of arable land--the major natural resource--lay idle. Agitation to end the slave trade prom.1sed to aggravate the problem. The country was underpopulated. Many Brazilians lived outside the mainstream of economic life and beyond the effective sway of the government. Part of the populace demanded better protection from the dangers inherent to wilderness living. The activity of others contributed to those perils. Despite their lack of means, Brazilian administrators , enthusiastically and imaginatively confronted the task of consolidating and. governing the empire. In 1850, they borrowed the concept of military colonizat10n from Europe and adapted that institution to fit Brazilian needs in an effort to muster all their physical and human resources. By judiciously placing small contingents of soldier-colonists at strategic locations throughout the empire, officials believed they had solved many of their problems. |
