Order Against Progress: Government, Foreign Investment and Railroads in Brazil, 1854-1913 (review)
Complaints about the deplorable state of routes into the interior and of overland transport in general were constant from the early years of the eighteenth century when the highlands of southeastern Brazil became the focus of intense migration after gold strikes. Mountainous topography and heavy tropical rains rendered road maintenance a nightmare while most Brazilian rivers, with the exception of those in the Amazon basin, had many impediments to navigation or flowed into foreign territory. Thus the author plausibly argues that a transportation bottleneck constituted the single most serious obstacle to economic development in Brazil before the introduction of railways. Summerhill’s study centers on the first phase of transport modernization, beginning with railroad construction in the 1850s and terminating on the eve of the First World War and the initial substitution of steam locomotion by motor vehicles.