Population and immigration to Brazil (1808-1920)

Abstract

The demography of immigration to Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries is addressed here in a double effort. On the one hand, I present annual estimative of population, using existing accounts but also showing new evidences. On the other hand, I put side by side the annual amount of people introduced by transatlantic slave trade and by the free migration of Europeans and Asians. The goal is to give a more systematized and comprehensive view of the weight of foreign migration in the population composition. It is concluded that immigration is a fundamental component of the Brazilian population evolution in the first half of the 19th century, but at this moment it was composed mainly by enslaved Africans. European and Asian migration to Brazil had great visibility in the later period, but it did not have the same demographic impact as previously observed, as it affected a much larger population stock than the previous one.