Smuggling and The “Internal Economy” of Nineteenth Century Brazil: The case of Goiás

Abstract

Until quite recently, most attention to Brazil’s agrarian history has focused on the chief export crops of sugar and coffee. This makes sense both because until the post-World War II period these were largely responsible for integrating Brazil into the world economy and because they have traditionally been the chief financial props for the elites and the central state. Exports have the advantage too of being relatively easy to study, given the availability of reports and statistics from domestic and foreign sources. But it is important to remember that exports have not been what have occupied most rural Brazilians most of the time, and this was particularly the case in the nineteenth century. Rather, their day to day activities have involved primarily the so-called “internal economy,” the production, consumption, and exchange on local, regional and, but only indirectly, national markets of food, animals, raw materials, and artisan handicrafts.