This monograph is a published version of the author’s 1991 master’s thesis at UNICAMP. Like most published master’s theses in Brazil, it is long on thought-provoking arguments and short on primary research. Graduate students and professors will be most interested in how Renato Perissonotto reviews and evaluates the existing literature on state-society relations in the Brazilian Old Republic.
The author argues that one autonomous faction of the São Paulo coffee elite exercised hegemonic control of the Old Republic’s political economy. This faction, which Perissonotto calls “o grande capital cafeeiro” (the coffee bourgeoisie), forced the national state to adopt its economic agenda. Although its roots were in coffee production, this group had since diversified into railroads, banking, and other commercial endeavors. The “junior class” of this coffee elite, a lavoura, was composed of landowners who specialized in agricultural production only. They rarely got their way with the federal government.
Perissinotto establishes the hegemony of the coffee bourgeoisie largely through his peculiar reading of key events, and by defining the hegemonic class faction to include virtually everyone with commercial interests. He implies, furthermore, that all members of this faction held interests in all the various commercial endeavors he discusses. Thus, for example, he admits that the Encilhamento saw a major devaluation of the milreis, one that most benefited the lovoura. Far from seeing this as a challenge to his thesis, however, he argues, first, that bankers, as members of the coffee bourgeoisie, also profited handsomely from Encilhamento speculation; and second, that the devaluation resulted not from coffee-producer lobbying efforts but from the need to resolve the currency shortage created by the rise of wage labor after the abolition of slavery.
Moving to another example, Perissinotto asserts that the Funding Loan clearly did benefit the coffee bourgeoisie because the stronger milreis made imported railroad inputs cheaper, thereby improving profits. As the author admits, however, the loan was largely the result of pressure from international capitalists and foreign governments. Still, he argues, without presenting any evidence, that this economic package was produced came partly as a result of pressure from class representatives.
In conclusion, Perissinotto does offer an alternative to the current debate on the relative importance of large and small coffee producers in São Paulo. What was important, he writes, was not the size of a landholding but whether or not a fazendeiro diversified into other commercial activities. Diversification determined the political and economic strategies that the coffee interests pursued in the Old Republic.
