The Predominance of Foreign Houses on the Coffee Export in Santos in the 19th Century

Abstract

It remains a gap in understanding the process that led foreign capital to control the export of Brazilian coffee in the nineteenth century. This paper elucidates the appearance of foreign houses –especially English and German firms– in the middle of 19th century at the port of Santos and to understand how these companies monopolized almost all the coffee exports of the province of São Paulo in the 1880s and 1890s. For both, we use reports of the Commercial Association of Santos faced with economic surveys of the province-state of São Paulo. The analysis shows that the dominance of foreign capital in Santos gave up from the joint operation of the export houses with other international companies in export related activities (banks, shipping and insurance), forming economic groups of foreign capital.