Modernização e reestruturações territoriais em Minas Gerais

Abstract

This thesis seeks to prove empirically that the State of Minas Gerais underwent through important structural and modernizing changes induced by a literate elite throughout its history that denoted pioneering in the process of urban modernization, and economic and territorial restructuring. It is based on the assumptions of the epistemology of the territory, and on the investigative techniques of historical geography, supported by an extensive bibliographical, cartographical and documental research. Furthermore, data on population and municipal production were listed as empirical evidence of the investigated restructuring processes. It is thus demonstrated that the reconfiguration of Minas Gerais territory and its urban network was set by a pool of modernization projects, that were able to transform its predominantly rural economy and its spatially deconcentrated population in the eighteenth century into a strong urban-industrial economy with higher demographic concentration in its medium and large cities at the beginning of the twenty-first century.