The rise and fall of the Brazilian coffee regime: a political and global history (1956-1958)

• Grant number: 22/06317-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: June 01, 2023
• End date: February 28, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Luis Moreli Rocha
• Grantee: Leonardo Façanha Derenze
• Host Institution: Instituto de Relações Internacionais (IRI). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 23/11123-8 - The rise and fall of the Brazilian coffee regime: a political and global history (1956-1958), BE.EP.MS

Abstract

In the post-1945 period, coffee was the world's second-most traded primary good. There is an extensive body of work about this global coffee system, focusing on the dynamics and historical process of the 1960s. However, besides Brazil being the largest coffee exporter globally, little we know about the Brazilian government's actions in the attempts to internationally institutionalize this global system during the 1950s. In particular, little attention is given to the space of experience of the coffee multilateralism in the Americas at the time, with its climax being the International Coffee Conference in Rio de Janeiro, in 1958. This research proposal will seek to map and historical analyze the global coffee system from 1956 to 1958, a period in which the coffee's international price faced severe fluctuation. Without losing sight of the bipolar global context of the Cold War, our research will try to comprehend other dynamics and processes that were taken into account by the actors, particularly the large relevance of coffee exports revenue to states that were choosing their economic development models, as was the case of Juscelino Kubitschek's Brazil (1956-1961). From the Global History perspective, this research will try to understand how different actors - Brazilian Coffee Institute, Ministry of Economy, and Ministry of Foreign Relations - seek to shape Brazil's international relations, in special the coffee question, discussed in several multilateral meetings among the Latin American countries in the late half of the 1950s. Thus, our main objective is to identify and analyze how the Brazilian government sought to transform its unique position as the largest global coffee exporter into a unique projection of international power.