Abstract
In the nineteenth-century Recife, Brazilian craftsmen (from Pernambuco and other provinces) competed in markets with European artisans. Conflicts between national and foreign workers were a tonic in that time-space. The article that I give to the reader tells the story of two German masters of crafts who have experienced such conjunctures and built strategies to conquer services (public and private) and allies (Brazilians and foreigners) beyond the small German community that lived in the nineteenth-century Recife. Therefore, in this text, through significant empirical evidence, we will be in touch with the existences of the foreman Theodoro Rampk and the master carpenter Remigio Kneip, which will allow us to know his agencies and the social limits imposed on them.
Keywords:
craftsmen; Germans; immigration