Publication: The Bittersweet Century: Slavery, tariffs and Brazilian export growth during the nineteenth century
Loading...
Identifiers
Publication date
2019-11
Defense date
2020-02-04
Authors
Advisors
Tutors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Impact
Export
Abstract
This dissertation revises the veracity of the official statistics and conventional narrative
of Brazil’s export performance during the nineteenth century. An accuracy test reveals
that the official export series is undervalued. When corrected using international prices,
post-independence (1822-1850) export growth is found to be the most dynamic of the
century. This dynamism was driven by the rapid growth of coffee exports in the southeast
and the revival of sugar exports in the northeast. The first part of the dissertation posits
that Brazil’s dynamic post-independence export performance was associated with
exogenous institutional change that improved Brazilian competitiveness in international
markets, specifically British West Indies slave emancipation. The second part of the
dissertation tests the emancipation hypothesis. Results indicate that, for the case of sugar,
British slave emancipation served to increase the demand for Brazilian sugar in the British
market. Increased demand was due to two British policy interventions. Initially, the
premature end to the system of apprenticeship in the West Indies in 1838 corresponded
with increased imports of Brazilian sugar, much of it destined to the British re-export
market. The reduction of duties on non-colonial sugar in 1846, together with declining
supplies from the British West Indies, led to rapidly increasing quantities of Brazilian
sugar retained for consumption. I estimate that the British policy interventions contributed
to an increase in Brazil’s market share of five per cent. Given the size of the British sugar
market, however, this corresponded to around 15 to 28 per cent of the volume of Brazil’s
exports. A comparison with other markets indicates that these trends were largely
confined to the British sugar market. For the case of coffee, the determinant of the rapid
growth of coffee exports is found to be the reduction and abolition in 1832 of the tariff
on coffee in the United States. The consequent fall in the duty-paid price led to a rapid
increase in consumption and the expansion of the potential of the American coffee
market. In less than a decade, the United States became the principal consumer of coffee
exports from Rio de Janeiro, and Brazil became the leading supplier of coffee to the
American market. I estimate that the reduction and abolition of the American tariff on
coffee is associated with an increase of around one-third in the volume of coffee exports
from the port of Rio de Janeiro. Given that the cultivation of coffee was dependent on the
exploitation of African slave labour, I also find that the reduction and abolition of the
tariff corresponded to an increase of one-quarter in the number of African slaves imported
to the southeast during the 1830s. Overall, the results of this dissertation represent an
important re-interpretation of the determinants of Brazilian export growth during the postindependence
period.