ABSTRACT
In a continent-sized country like Brazil, regions and development are intrinsically connected. Regional inequalities are rooted in natural resources endowment as well as in historical processes of territorial occupation and economic and social development. The establishment of large plantations of agricultural staples for export in the Southeast and of cattle-raising in the South brought about industrialization to those regions from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries onward. As industrialization advanced, a symmetrical retardation or even economic decline occurred in the Northeast and North regions, while the center and western regions remained as unexplored frontiers.
