This thesis treats of the transformation of the Amazonian market in the century XIX, starting from the rubber economy, having as basis theory the sense of market transformation by Karl Polanyi - the author of the classic “The great transformation: the origins of our time”, published in 1944. It is, therefore, a work of economical history with theoretical fundaments extracted from the economical sociology. The transformations that were happening at the Amazonian market could be outlined in several spheres - starting mainly from the 1870's, when the regional economy started to interfer definitively in the pattern of capitalist accumulation. Market transformations occurred in the rubber plantations of Pará (rubber plantations of the rivers Acará, Capim, Guamá and Mojú, Marajó Island, River Xingu and River Tapajós - all of those of pre-capitalist phases) as far as the Amazon (rubber plantations of the rivers Solimões, Madeiras, later Purus and Juruá, in Acre - those then in the stage of capitalist economy), transformations in the profile of the laborers of the rubber plantations (from the tapuios to the Northeastern immigrants), transformations in the infrastructure of the cities, mainly Belém and Manaus, and transformations in the pattern of the capital inversions, mainly of foreigner origins. The regional navigation (from the so traditional sailing boats to the canoes, and mainly of the steamships) is inserted in this context as a effective mechanism, decisive for those transformations, although it was being transformed itself, also, by the economy of the rubber - therefore, a dialectic movement. Without the steam navigation it would not have been possible the accomplishment of the great race to the rubber plantations of the Amazonian area as well as without the use of the canoes, it would have been hard to move ahead through the immense igarapés net, river passages and lakes to supply the countryside, the cities and the rubber plantations themselves. The steam navigation is the great prominence of our work, as it was inserted in the Amazon, in 1853, by Visconde de Mauá, and being part of the technological revolution of the developed countries, it starts to be the most important means of transportation of the local trade - a simple trip from Manaus to Belém on the traditional navigation took two months on average. As for the steamship the same trip was made in about 10 days. The steam navigation introduced the Amazon in the concrete sense of the technological, cultural and economical revolution of the developed countries. The steam navigation company, Amazon River, founded in 1912, was the most innovator enterprise of the rubber economy and during the whole first half of the XX century.
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