Patricians connected: the interference of the Syrian-Lebanese immigrants in the urbanization of São Paulo (1887-1928)

Abstract

The expansion of the urbanized area of São Paulo was mainly a product of the private initiative, which promoted several modifications in the urban space during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Making the city a business was a common procedure among city dwellers, creating an environment in which property became profitable. In this period, the city of São Paulo underwent a process of demographic change and became an important pole of reception of immigrants, who impacted economically, socially and culturally. Among the colonies, the Syrian-Lebanese were consolidated in urban environments and let several marks in the city. Therefore, the research intends, by privileging the microhistory in dialogue with the macroscopic and territorial process to study the biography of some important immigrants in the community between the years of 1887 and 1928. They are: Benjamin Jafet, Nami Jafet, Basílio Jafet and Rizkallah Jorge Tahan. The analysis of their performance allows us to understand how they participated in the production of São Paulo and how the possible choices of these individuals were influenced by the context. The commercial, industrial and social networks that they developed and their properties, have innumerable meanings that allow us to the understand their insertion in São Paulo. This analysis aims to interconnect the social and the material space to verify how the city and the individuals construct a relation of circularity. (AU)