While Brazil was a Portuguese colony, the transfer of the capital to the interior of the country had already been considered, mainly out of a concern for national security. A capital at the coast was not safe. Salvador had been attacked, conquered and looted many times. Rio de Janeiro had paid its price with human lives and farms. Practically all costal villages and towns had been invaded and plundered: São Vicente, Vitória, Olinda, Recife, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro. The Portuguese capital itself, Lisbon, had succumbed to the menace from “Den Haag” (the administrative capital of Holland) which threatened to send a fleet to Lisbon through the Tejo River. To prevent this, Portugal had to pay a six million ‘Cruzados’ indemnification to the privileged West Indian Company in compensation for the loss of Pernambuco state to Portugal. Moreover, Portugal had to hand all conquered weapons over to this company and to agree to special concessions in sugar trade. During the time of the empire, the most favored argument for a capital in the interior of the country was the necessity to protect the capital from the canons of the great powers. However, there were also other reasons such as the desire to promote “progress” and “civilization.” José Bonifácio stressed that a new capital would instill larger trade flows in short time. Varnhagem alleged that a capital inland would be more adequate to develop the sertão, to promote its wealth and trade among the provinces. When the new capital had finally been built in the heart of Brazil and the government was transferred, the world was quite different and President Kubitscheck considered the transfer of the capital, the realization of this secular dream, an overarching national objective: “Brasília represents the conquest of the land, which had been ours just on the map. Of its eight million and five hundred thousand square kilometers, six million remain uninhabited.” The world had lived a strange period, and gotten lost in philosophies that would lead to the atrocities of World War II. In Germany the theory of “Vital Space” had emerged, idealized by Karl Haussofer. This `theory’ tried to justify the invasion of less populated countries by the people of more populated ones. Before Paul Reynaud became President of France, he had suggested, as early as 1935, the creation of a new state on the Brazilian Central Plateau. His argument was that the plateau was deserted, uninhabited, and could serve as a land for the world excess of population. Even after the war, such proposals survived at the United Nations. So, the occupation of empty spaces in the interior of Brazil seemed an urgent matter if Brazil wanted to prevent future problems. This concern was a key consideration behind the transfer of the seat of government. Evidently, economic, geographic, political and social factors also influenced the President’s decision when he chose not to wait any longer. For instance, the location of Rio de Janeiro was geographically distant from the center of Brazil and for that reason little convenient. As a consequence, Rio could not exercise the same beneficial influence on all parts of the country. Economically, Brazil was divided into two different and unequal regions: The coastal and the Center-South regions?densely populated and highly industrialized—on the one hand, and the interior on the other hand?rudimentary, with a scarcely distributed population, based on agricultural exploration of the sertão and on a subsistence economy. The social and political implications of this division were obvious. The presence of the federal government on the central plateau of Goiás state would, as one consequence, tend to diminish the invisible line that separated the miserable interior of the country from the prosperous coast, which had social consequences and might even lead to disasters. The transfer of the capital would promote the unity of Brazil with indolence and tranquility. In a nutshell, the reasons for the transfer of the capital to the interior changed strongly over time. The main focus was national safety during the colonial period, the civilizing function of a capital located in the country’s geographic center during the empire, and the promotion of national integration during JK’s presidency.