Política econômica e crises cambiais: A gestão financeira do Império do Brasil nos primórdios do padrão-ouro (1846-1858)

Abstract

This work concerns Brazil’s public finance, specifically monetary policy and the exchange rate, during the Second Empire (1840-1889), focusing on the period 1846 to 1858. At that time, the Conservative Party enjoyed an apparent hegemony, co-opting moderate Liberals into “Conciliation” governments, reducing the political space of dissidents, and securing approval of projects conducive to national progress. The economic policy of this period, therefore, developed mostly under the aegis of the Conservatives, whose objectives were balancing the budget and sustaining the exchange rate as a means to avoid recourse to the issuing of currency.
We seek to understand this conservative model of public administration which sought to insert a peripheral economy into the gold standard. The vulnerability of the Brazilian monetary system made this task challenging.