The Brazilian Economy in the 19th Century

Abstract

“The empire is coffee. And coffee is the valley.” This common phrase for a long time dominated the Brazilian imaginary about coffee, but it doesn’t translate the truth of the Brazilian economy of the 19th century. Coffee, the “black gold,” was Brazil’s main export product in the 19th century, and its main producing region was the Paraíba do Sul River Valley, which encompassed the provinces of São Paulo (high Paraíba) and Rio de Janeiro (middle and lower Paraíba). But the economy of the Brazilian empire cannot be reduced to coffee plantations. In other Brazilian regions, there were other primary products such as livestock products, resources extracted from the Amazon rainforest, and others. Minas Gerais, the largest Brazilian slave province, was not a producer region for export. In addition, there was a transformation in the "secondary" sector, with handicrafts, factories (sets of workshops), and manufacturing, both in the city and in the countryside, with slave and free labor. The political stability and economic growth of the mid-19th century made Brazil a region of foreign direct investment (FDI), mainly British, in sectors such as infrastructure (railways and ports), banks, insurance companies, and industry. In the last quarter of the 19th century, modern textile industries emerged, mainly in the Center-South, alongside the expansion of coffee in São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro (Zona da Mata Mineira).