Análise socioeconômica da cidade de Fortaleza a partir do censo 1887

Abstract

This work aims to carry out an analysis of the city of Fortaleza, in the second half of the 19th century, in order to observe the aspects responsible for its main transformations within the economic scenario. The study starts from an evaluation of the census carried out in 1887, adding up to a total of 11,000 data that include, regarding each person: name, sex, age, color, marital status, place of birth, nationality, residence, primary education level, religion and apparent illnesses. It also refers to the relationship of kinship or coexistence of each person with the head of the family and, finally, how many houses, with resident families, there were. Allied to this analysis, it will be possible to evaluate the transformations that the city of Fortaleza has undergone in terms of its city organization, especially with the advent of industrialization and the consequent addition of factories, which directly interferes with local commerce and the life of the city. On the other hand, social issues are observed, in order to discover within history, the main difficulties faced by the population of Ceará, and specifically that of Fortaleza, such as severe droughts and large disease epidemics. Among the social issues, the assessment turns to droughts, one of the most damaging one’s ever faced being the drought of 1877 that lasted until 1879, understanding that the long and successive periods of drought disrupted the economy by increasing the number of migrants who went in search of some improvement. With the result of this study, it is possible to understand the economic and social factors that drove the transformations in the city of Fortaleza, in the second half of the 19th century.