The cotton trade and Brazilian foreign commerce during the Industrial Revolution

• Grant number: 15/02414-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: September 21, 2015
• End date: March 20, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics
• Principal Investigator: Renato Perim Colistete
• Grantee: Thales Augusto Zamberlan Pereira
• Supervisor: William R. Summerhill
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/04151-6 - Cotton and international trade in Brazil during the Industrial Revolution, BP.DR

Abstract

A fundamental factor for economic growth in the United States during the nineteenth century was its cotton exports, the main input of the Industrial Revolution. However, before the increase of North American trade, between 1760 and 1820, Brazilian northeast exported increasing amounts of cotton, remaining as the third largest supplier of England until the 1860s. Using the cotton region of the United States South as a reference, this research seeks to understand the decline of Brazilian regions that produced and exported the most important commodity of international trade in the nineteenth century. Economic history literature from the last decade has researched, under distinct perspectives, the different paths taken between the Americas. However, these studies encountered a number of difficulties controlling for factors' heterogeneity between countries. In analyzing the cotton culture, this research uses regions of Brazil and the United States that had a higher degree of homogeneity to understand their different development trajectories. Just as Pernambuco, Maranhão, and Bahia, United States southern states - the center of cotton production - were societies with monoculture, slavery, low rates of immigration and limited access to political rights. Nevertheless, the southern United States has developed faster than the cotton regions in Brazil and currently has a per capita income on average six times higher than the Brazilian northeast. The proposed research also will seek to rebuild foreign trade and fiscal structures of cotton producing provinces. (AU)