Os Wilson na Corte Imperial (1837-1888)

Abstract

This article aims to explore the trajectory of the Wilson family as a case study illustrating much of the economic history of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the wider world of the nineteenth century. Reflecting on the diversity of the economic activities of the Wilsons (imports, port services, and shipbuilding, mainly) and considering the multiplicity of the political interests they touched, we can better understand some aspects of the development of the Brazilian economy, both in structural and in cyclical terms. However, the opposite is true: it is only possible to understand the career of the Wilsons taking into account the slave structure of the Brazilian society, as well as the International Division of Labor, in which Brazil was inserted through Rio de Janeiro at a new level of intensity and subordination to Imperialism. Therefore, we will try to outline a socioeconomic profile of this family business in Rio de Janeiro as a way of clarifying how its relationship with other regions of the country and the world conditioned its beginning and expansion in the Capital of the Empire.