PhD thesisThis thesis examines Brazilian economic development in Imperial Brazil. It explores the reasons for Brazil’s poor economic performance in the XIXth century. To try to answer this question it focuses on the debate concerning the nature of economic development among latecomers in the XIXth century. It considers particularly the Radgar Nurkse-Irving Kravis debate on export-led growth development in the XIXth century and the Rostow-Gerschenkron debate on the nature of the phenomenon of late industrialization in Central and East Europe. This thesis argues that: (i)Brazil’s economic performance in the XIXth century was poor. This failure was due not only to Brazil’s inability to develop a growing manufacturing sector, but also to her inefficiency in improving agricultural productivity using her huge land resources to increase her share of world trade; (ii) Brazil’s failure of economic development was not determined a priori. This thesis rejects those explanations which give structural features as the sole reason for Brazil’s poor economic performance. It argues that internal reasons, expressed in the decisions made by economic and political agents, should be the key for an understanding of Brazil’s economic performance in so far as these decisions could have contributed either to overcome or to reinforce the barriers to economic change;(iii) In this sense the Brazilian failure should be related to her inability to change the internal economic structure. That is, in so far as there was little opportunity for development through the slow process of internal reinvestment of profits by private firms, as happened in the British case, in Brazil the alternative would have been the paths followed by the XIXth century European latecomers, which did not happen in Brazil due to the action and above all the inaction of the Imperial State; (iv) The sucess of coffee, which was due more to the weakness of Brazil’s competitors than to the dynamism Brazil’s coffee industry, was an exception. Brazil, however, was able to benefit enormously from coffee’s success. Nevertheless, despite coffee, Brazil was an economic failure in the XIXth century, but due to coffee Brazil was able in the last years of the XIXth century to create the basis for her dynamic economic growth in the XXth century
