{"id":433216,"date":"2022-04-29T15:52:55","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T18:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=433216"},"modified":"2022-04-29T15:52:55","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T18:52:55","slug":"a-brazilian-style-liberal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/a-brazilian-style-liberal\/","title":{"rendered":"A Brazilian-style liberal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Associa\u00e7\u00e3o Comercial da Bahia \/ Wikimedia Commons <\/span><\/a> Brazil’s imperial economic policy adviser in an oil painting from 1908 by Francisco Vieira de CamposAssocia\u00e7\u00e3o Comercial da Bahia \/ Wikimedia Commons <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

During the afternoon of May 14, 2021, while presenting his doctoral research at King’s College London, in England, Brazilian researcher Guilherme Celestino revealed a little-known dimension to the career of the jurist, public administrator, economist, and senator from Bahia, Jos\u00e9 da Silva Lisboa, Viscount of Cairu (1756\u20131835): the viscount was also a journalist. In 1821, at the age of 64, he began to write pamphlets on the Independence of Brazil, an issue being hotly debated at the time. \u201cSilva Lisboa is a complex intellectual, who cannot be treated in a reductionist way or framed by extreme positions,\u201d observes Celestino, also a journalist, whose thesis is to be published as a book (in English) later this year.<\/p>\n

In 1821 and 1822, while a high official of the Portuguese Royal Court and an advisor to Dom Jo\u00e3o VI (1767\u20131826) on Brazilian economic policy, Silva Lisboa published 13 pamphlets, almost all anonymously. Among them, “Conciliator of the United Kingdom of Portugal,” with seven printings, in which he defended the union between Brazil and Portugal; his “Dialogue between philosopher and pastor,” a single edition, in which a man tells a peasant about the improvements in life at the Court; “Notes on the circular dispatch of the Congress of Laibach,” with three printings, criticizing the governments of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, which wanted to stifle revolutionary movements; “An alarm from Brazil,” also a single issue, which took a stronger tone against the Court and in favor of Independence; and “Complaints from Brazil,” with 15 printings, defending the continued residence of Dom Pedro I in Brazil and criticizing the liberals, who wanted independence.<\/p>\n

Celestino, currently a visiting researcher at the University of Lisbon, explains the apparent contradictions by saying that the Bahian jurist defended Brazil’s administrative independence from Portugal and the move to capitalize on the agencies already created in Rio de Janeiro, which mirrored those of Lisbon. He also approved of the sovereignty conferred on Brazil in 1815 when elevated into the United Kingdom of Portugal and Algarves. But he was against political independence, which, in his view, would not be advantageous, as the country was not yet ready to stand on its own two feet.<\/p>\n

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Marc Ferrez \/ Gilberto Ferrez Collection \/ Instituto Moreira Salles<\/span><\/a> View of downtown Rio de Janeiro in 1889; photo by Marc FerrezMarc Ferrez \/ Gilberto Ferrez Collection \/ Instituto Moreira Salles<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSilva Lisboa, like his contemporaries, saw Brazilians and Portuguese as part of the same people,\u201d says Celestino. In an article published in May 2021 in the Bulletin of Latin American Research<\/em>, he argued, \u201cAlthough Silva Lisboa had always taken a position against the rupture, until it became inevitable, he criticized the decisions made by the Cortes (constituent courts) against Brazil beginning in late 1821. He used threatening arguments against the Portuguese administration, but he always avoided attacking the monarchy.\u201d Celestino is referring to the Constituent Courts of 1820, an assembly instituted\u2014after the liberal revolution in Porto\u2014to draft a new constitution for Portugal. It limited the powers of the monarchy and revoked a series of decisions favorable to Brazil that had been established during the 13 years that Dom Jo\u00e3o VI lived in the country.<\/p>\n

Silva Lisboa, or simply \u201cCairu,\u201d as he is often called, had begun to gain visibility in the early nineteenth century in Salvador, where he was born. After graduating in law at the University of Coimbra, he returned to Brazil in 1779 and was a professor of philosophy and Greek for 20 years. He later became an employee of an agency in charge of agriculture and commerce regulation in the capital of Bahia. Based on his readings\u2014initially from economist Adam Smith (1723\u20131790) and later from philosophers David Hume (1711\u20131776), Jeremy Bentham (1748\u20131832), and Edmund Burke (1729\u20131797)\u2014he became excited about economic liberalism. \u201cHe embraced it so unreservedly that he became the best-known Brazilian propagandist for liberalism in the nineteenth century,\u201d comments University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) historian Antonio Penalves Rocha, in the introduction to the book Viscount of Cairu<\/em> (Editora 34, 2001). Silva Lisboa preached free trade in two books, both printed in Lisbon: Princ\u00edpios de economia mercantil <\/em>(Principles of mercantile economy) (1801) and Princ\u00edpios de economia pol\u00edtica<\/em> (Principles of political economy) (1804), the first book in Portuguese to cover classical political economy, which, by definition, deals with the formation, distribution, and consumption of wealth.<\/p>\n

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Digital Library of the Chamber of Deputies <\/span><\/a> The cover of Princ\u00edpios de economia pol\u00edtica<\/em>, the first book in Portuguese on this subjectDigital Library of the Chamber of Deputies <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

His idea that establishing free trade was vital for the Portuguese empire was in sync with the plans of Dom Jo\u00e3o VI, who lived under British protection, on which he depended to ensure the continuity of the Brigantine dynasty in Portugal, then occupied by the French. At the invitation of the monarch, whom he met in 1808 in Salvador, during the first stop of the squadron that was conducting the Royal Court to Brazil, he moved to Rio de Janeiro and assumed the position of member of the Royal Board of Commerce, Agriculture, Factories, and Navigation. \u201cIn Rio, he left behind his days as a theorist, became an administrator, and felt the pains of the colony being reborn as a national state,\u201d comments historian Jos\u00e9 Jobson de Andrade Arruda, from the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP), who wrote about Cairu in his book Historiografia: Teoria e pr\u00e1tica<\/em> (Historiography: Theory and practice) (Alameda, 2014).<\/p>\n

In 1808, the Royal Press\u2014where Silva Lisboa was the censor, approving or vetoing the publication of works sent to it\u2014published his book Observa\u00e7\u00f5es sobre o Com\u00e9rcio Franco no Brasil<\/em> (Observations on open trade in Brazil). In it he legitimized the decree opening Brazil’s ports to trade with friendly nations, which in practice meant only England, since other countries were under the rule of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769\u20131821). \u201cSilva Lisboa positioned himself as an intermediary between the government and Portuguese merchants in Brazil, who did not look favorably on free trade, as it meant the loss of monopolies and privileges characteristic of the colonial system,\u201d comments historian Carlos de Faria Junior, from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Governador Valadares campus. \u201cHe defended free trade as a necessary and fundamental economic practice for the benefit of all, in a discourse that praises England and uses the theories of Adam Smith and the popular ideas of the time, such as progress and a civilized world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because he defended free trade, Silva Lisboa was accused of defending the interests of English merchants instead of fighting for Luso-Brazilian businessmen. \u201cHis connections with power cost Jos\u00e9 da Silva Lisboa dearly,\u201d concludes Rocha in his book. He was attacked by opponents who defended the country’s autonomy and industrialization, such as Jos\u00e9 Bonif\u00e1cio de Andrada e Silva (1763\u20131838), Cipriano Barata (1762\u20131838) and Jo\u00e3o Severiano Maciel da Costa (1769\u20131833). During the popular revolts of 1831 that preceded the abdication of Dom Pedro I, his house was stoned and his life threatened.<\/p>\n

One difference with classical liberals: Cairu defended the idea of a strong state acting as a driver of economic progress<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like Smith, Silva Lisboa was against monopolies, but for different reasons. \u201cSmith saw monopolies as obstacles to the expansion of British industry, while Cairu viewed them as harmful to the economic development of the Brazilian colony,\u201d comments Arruda. There was a blatant contradiction: \u201cIn theoretical terms, he defended freedom of commerce, but in practice he relativized the general precept and took steps to protect it,\u201d the historian says. Over time, however, after coming to understand the Brazilian socioeconomic reality, Cairu developed his own economic thinking, seeking to reconcile the commitments made with England with the needs of a colony on the verge of becoming a sovereign entity in the United Kingdom of Portugal.<\/p>\n

Much as Adam Smith did for England, the American lawyer and economist Alexander Hamilton (1755\u20131804) advocated a policy of industrialization in the United States, which had declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1776. Arruda argues that, unlike Cairu\u2019s economic thinking, \u201cHamilton\u2019s industrialist program was ahead of its time and lacked the social and political foundations necessary for its implementation. It gained acceptance only 50 years later, in 1861, within the context of the Civil War [1861\u20131865], which determined the United States’ destiny of industrialism.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Marc Ferrez \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/a> A coffee farm…Marc Ferrez \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In Observa\u00e7\u00f5es sobre a franqueza da ind\u00fastria e estabelecimento de f\u00e1bricas no Brasil<\/em> (Observations on the openness of industry and the establishment of factories in Brazil), from 1810, Cairu recognized that the country’s wealth lay in agriculture and was opposed to “fictitious industries,” as he put it, that had no capital of their own and needed support from the state. He argued that only \u201cgoods which are very voluminous and not of sufficient price to bear the costs of freight can be made in Brazil and sold at the best market.\u201d During his administration, the Royal Board of Commerce approved the production of widely consumed items, such as agricultural tools and rough, low-cost fabrics. \u201cHe was not against industrialization,\u201d Arruda points out.<\/p>\n

Cairu was also a moderate abolitionist, another of his contradictions. \u201cHe refrained from touching on this subject. He may even have been against it, but he didn’t want to oppose the established order in Brazil, which was based on a slave economy. Although liberal modernity abhorred slavery, he was a magistrate in a country that embraced the practice,\u201d says Faria Junior. Celestino adds, \u201cCairu was afraid of a slave revolution in Brazil, as had happened in Haiti in 1791.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Marc Ferrez \/ Wikimedia Commons \t<\/span><\/a> …and factory in S\u00e3o Paulo, 1880: Cairu valued the agricultural and industrial production of low-cost products onlyMarc Ferrez \/ Wikimedia Commons \t<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Another difference he had with classical liberal economists is the defense of a strong state, which he held was a driver of economic progress. For Faria Junior, the numerous contradictions make the nicknames “the father of Brazilian liberalism\u201d and \u201cthe father of economic policy in Brazil\u201d attributed to Silva Lisboa rather shaky. In the preface to an edition of Observa\u00e7\u00f5es<\/em> published by the senate in 1999, Arruda and Fernando Antonio Novais, also from USP, consider Cairu\u2019s reputation as \u201cthe first Brazilian economist, in the sense of introducing us to political economy, and therefore, the founding father of our economic science,\u201d to be \u201cabsolutely merited.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started writing my doctoral thesis, I noticed that what had been written about Cairu was rarely free from personal judgment,\u201d comments Faria Junior, whose research, defended in 2008 under Arruda’s supervision, has been adapted for publication later this year. \u201cThe descriptions sometimes exalted him, sometimes tore him down, devaluing his efforts to evolve an economic philosophy of his own and contribute to the country’s development.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 da Silva Lisboa, Viscount of Cairu, defended the Independence of Brazil and adapted European theories to the early nineteenth-century Brazilian economy","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[225],"coauthors":[5968],"class_list":["post-433216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospect","tag-economy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433216"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433272,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433216\/revisions\/433272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433216"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=433216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}