Heterodoxy and Industrialization in an Agrarian-Exporting Context: Rui Barbosa’s Economic Thought

Abstract

Rui Barbosa’s economic legacy notably refers to his controversial performance at the Ministry of Finance of the first Brazilian republican government, which is associated to a strong inflationism. However, the research in primary and secondary sources allows to identify his untimely ideas about economic themes that went through the economic debate in the second half of 19th century, such as the critical of the currency neutrality, the monetary monopoly state and the gold-standard. During a period of complete domain of the orthodoxy economy, the originality of Rui Barbosa’s economic thoughts were expressed to move away from the traditional paradigm, and also to adapt those ideas to what was deemed to be the country’s reality. Going beyond, he made a premature defense of the industrialization and of the necessity of a "nationalism breeding", reason why he is considered one of the Brazilian and Latin-American developmentalist precursors that gained importance along the 20th century.