Protectionist But Globalised? Latin American Custom Duties and Trade During the Pre-1914 Belle Époque

Abstract

While it is true that Latin American republics had no rival on maximising revenues from custom collection during the belle epoque, this paper shows that Latin American countries were also generous importers, only behind the larger commercial countries of Western Europe in terms of imports per capita. Latin American citizens were much more linked to international trade than citizens of most regions of the world. Their relation to the world economy was tighter both via their imports and their exports relative to their population and income levels. This paper comes to show that there is no contradiction between the high custom collection by the Latin American republics and their high level of interaction with the global economy in the pre-1914 belle epoque, although large country differences can be observed when descending from the regional to the national level.