Industrialist thought in the formation of the Brazilian National State. Analysis of a writing by João Severiano Maciel da Costa (1820)

Abstract

This article focuses the industrialist ideas of João Severiano Maciel da Costa in 1820. In his study about slavery and African traffic, Maciel da Costa eventually held discussions about the Brazilian economy development strategies and, in doing so, became distant from the free-trade vision and overtly defended the state interventionism and the national industry protection. On the one side, he shows that the Brazilian industrialist ideas were born before the official proclamation of Independence. On the other hand, the author’s important position in the process of construction of the Brazilian Imperial State shows that the industrialist ideas were already present in the hardcore of the First Reign power system, which raises the thesis that the independence process would have been conducted by an organized group around a single economic thought namely the free-trade.