New attempts to start plantations and agricultural settlements in the interior mostly failed, but a greater number of Portuguese settlers, mainly impoverished peasants, immigrated to the colony, settling primarily in the cities along the coast.  As the number of whites in the cities increased, they began to displace the mesticos, and new restrictions were placed on bureaucratic positions.  By the 1920s the old Afro-Portuguese elite had mostly lost its prominent place it had occupied during the nineteenth century.