Maximum Population of Brazil?

I'm sorry for all the threads, but part of the reason why I joined this site was because I had several questions and possible scenarios that I've always wondered and wanted feedback on.

Now, what could potentially be the maximum population of Brazil and I guess throw in Uruguay as well due to the Brazilian Empire?
 
Bump..
Is it reaching to say Brazil at it's greatest size could support US's population (300 million+) pretty well?
 
If they're concentrated in cities, theres no reason Brazil's population couldn't be 500 million. The water situation in Brazil is excellent, the only problem is the financial situation (you'd have like 200 million people in slums if Brazil is as wealthy as in reality). How you'd reach this population is a different matter altogether.
 
If they're concentrated in cities, theres no reason Brazil's population couldn't be 500 million. The water situation in Brazil is excellent, the only problem is the financial situation (you'd have like 200 million people in slums if Brazil is as wealthy as in reality). How you'd reach this population is a different matter altogether.

Interesting, I was always under the impression that the Amazon rainforest partly hindered Brazil's population, but more immigrants mostly going to the States rather than Brazil nowadays and I guess to an extent in the past affected this. Perhaps maybe 50 million European immigrants could somehow be convinced to go to Brazil maybe if the economy was better and maybe a higher pardo/mulatto population making it near 300 million?
 
If the economy were better, birth rates would fall faster. If you want a high population, you need the country to get stuck in a low-income trap rather than a middle-income trap. Don't forget, most US population growth has been from natural growth rather than immigration - at no point past independence was the US population more than 15% foreign-born.
 
If the economy were better, birth rates would fall faster. If you want a high population, you need the country to get stuck in a low-income trap rather than a middle-income trap. Don't forget, most US population growth has been from natural growth rather than immigration - at no point past independence was the US population more than 15% foreign-born.
Canada is above 20%, Argentina hit ~30% in the early 1900s, and Australia is sitting a bit above 25%. Immigration is key, and more key is the descendents of immigrants (who obviously don't count as foreign born).
 
Canada is above 20%, Argentina hit ~30% in the early 1900s, and Australia is sitting a bit above 25%. Immigration is key, and more key is the descendents of immigrants (who obviously don't count as foreign born).

Descendants of immigrants don't add up to much without natural growth.

Canada and Australia indeed have way more immigration than the US. They're also small; early-20c Argentina was even smaller. A country the size of OTL Brazil could only get these immigration rates if the entire global pattern of migration changed. Unfortunately for its demographics, becoming a migration magnet would require it to be so rich it couldn't have that much natural growth in the 20c. Since 1900, Brazil has grown from 17.4 million to 206 million, a factor of 12. Canada has only managed a factor of 7, and the US a factor of 4.

Put another way, let's say you get 50 million people for free from first-world natural growth. That would require a US-level baby boom. For the rest, just to get to present population from immigration (say, since 1950), you'd need 2.2% annual net migration. If you can believe Wikipedia, exactly one country in the world has that, Qatar. Canada and Australia are just south of 0.6%.
 
Early success against various tropical diseases would certainly help.

It certainly would. Easier access to the interior would help a lot as well - Brazilian littoral has a narrow coastal plain, followed by mountain ranges that, while not too tall, are steep. The Santos-São Paulo trip(55 km in a straight line) took three days before railways. There is a reason Imperial Brazil paid so much attention to free navigation in the Paraná and Paraguai rivers.
 
Maybe a better and more spraw rail network, could encorage the population and industry to more central and north regions, like states of Goiania, Mato Grosso, Tocatins and Pará, and not remain only in South and Southeastern states. Is possible one PoD, where Brasilia is built, and to connect to rest of the country, major rail links are built to link major centers around country.
 
It would need to be a pre-1900 POD but it's possible at verious points in history for African territories like Angola to come under administration of what would become Brazil.
 
It would need to be a pre-1900 POD but it's possible at verious points in history for African territories like Angola to come under administration of what would become Brazil.

I don't doubt Angola could come under Brazilian rule (the Philippines after all was ruled from Mexico until Mexican independence), but the thing is keeping Angola under Brazilian rule. Plus it's kinda cheap to add such an obvious overseas territory to this hypothetical Brazil's population.
 
Maybe a better and more spraw rail network, could encorage the population and industry to more central and north regions, like states of Goiania, Mato Grosso, Tocatins and Pará, and not remain only in South and Southeastern states. Is possible one PoD, where Brasilia is built, and to connect to rest of the country, major rail links are built to link major centers around country.

That goes back to the access to the interior problem, at least in part. Building railways to cross the coastal ranges was expensive, and even today the railway network is plagued with small radius curves and other features that bring down average speed, because to build any other way would mean plenty of tunnels and overpasses - that was one of the big reasons for the decline of railways in Brazil after the 50's.
 
That goes back to the access to the interior problem, at least in part. Building railways to cross the coastal ranges was expensive, and even today the railway network is plagued with small radius curves and other features that bring down average speed, because to build any other way would mean plenty of tunnels and overpasses - that was one of the big reasons for the decline of railways in Brazil after the 50's.

True. And another problem of railway decline as the many gauges used, which does not allow trains going south to north and vice versa. Another factor is that railroads in Brazil were never targeted for the integration of the territory but only for export products towards the coast.
 
I don't doubt Angola could come under Brazilian rule (the Philippines after all was ruled from Mexico until Mexican independence), but the thing is keeping Angola under Brazilian rule. Plus it's kinda cheap to add such an obvious overseas territory to this hypothetical Brazil's population.

I seriously doubt if Angola were to become part of Brazil's potential population at one point that Brazil would be able to keep them under their rule for much long. But my question was kind of the Brazilian empire that happened, as in Brazil and Uruguay.
 
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