II. Péter brazil császár szerepe a Brazíliába irányuló szíriai-libanoni bevándorlásban

After the abolition of the institution of slavery in 1888 and the boom in coffee cultivation, a labor shortage emerged in Brazil. The problem was to be solved by the organized resettlement of foreign, primarily European workers. Immigrants willing to work on the coffee plantations were provided with various subsidies by the state. Although only those immigrants engaged in agricultural work on the plantations received government support, this did not mean that the state prohibited spontaneous immigration. Spontaneous immigrants were those who did not arrive in Brazil through recruitment or agency activity and did not receive government support. Such were the Syrian–Lebanese workers who were mainly engaged in commercial rather than agricultural activities. From the second half of the nineteenth century, they left the Ottoman Empire in increasing numbers to try their luck in the Latin American country. The aim of this paper is to prove, relying on primary sources and the results of secondary literature, that even though Syrian-Lebanese immigration to Brazil was spontaneous, Pedro II of Brazil had an important role in encouraging it.