Land structure and concentration of land ownership in the immigrant colony Dona Francisca (Joinville), Santa Catarina, 1850-1920

Abstract

Based on records of landowners at Dona Francisca colony and the town of Joinville and in the Brazilian agricultural census of 1920, this article presents statistics and indicators that have allow the evaluation on concentration of land ownership at Dona Francisca colony and Joinville city in the nineteenth century, and in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, in the early twentieth century. The presented evidence in this investigation demonstrate that the model of colonization, the predominance of small rural properties, and the more equality on the distribution of land in some regions of Santa Catarina, especially on areas of European colonization as Joinville, one of the largest and most important centers of German immigration in Brazil in the nineteenth century, didn´t prevent that the state of Santa Catarina about presenting similar or even higher indexes of land inequality than those ones in Brazilian states marked by the great sugar and coffee exporting.