How did foreign investment in infrastructure affect a relatively backward Latin American economy? The author engages this long-standing issue in Latin American history by applying the methods of the "new economic history" to the study of Brazilian railway development. Railroads have long been viewed as having intensified Brazil's dependence on foreign product and capital markets in the second half of the nineteenth century. Because steam locomotion in Brazil relied heavily on British finance in an age of export-led economic growth, many scholars have viewed railroads as magnifying economic...

Mexico began its long and often painful transition from an agricultural and rural society to one largely industrial and urban during the late "Porfiriato," the period between 1890 and 1910. Challenging the standard view of the Porfirian state as dominated by personalist politics, foreign financial interests, and a disadvantageous export economy, this book argues that beginning in the 1890s, the Mexican government adopted a coherent set of economic policies explicitly designed to foster Mexican industry, notably manufacturing. The author offers the first systematic explanation of why private...

Until the last decades of the nineteenth century, Mexico faced the twin problems of chronic political instability and slow economic growth. During the period of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship (1876-1911), however, a series of institutional reforms reignited growth and created rents that enabled the Diaz government to threaten its opponents with military force or to buy them off. These institutional reforms came out of distinctly political processes, which often had to be brokered among multiple groups of economic elites and regional political bosses. Therefore, they were often structured to...

After its independence in 1821, Mexico experienced more than fifty years of political chaos until Porfirio Diaz assumed power in 1876. Thirty-five years later, Mexico entered another period of turbulent instability (1910-29), during which the country underwent a revolution, a counter-revolution, a counter-counter-revolution, three civil wars, and four violent coups or attempted coups. In both periods, governments repudiated debts, confiscated cash reserves, demanded forced loans, and engaged in the unrestrained printing of currency. The governments that came to power after these bouts of...

Today the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo is one of the world's most advanced agricultural, industrial, and urbanized regions. Its historical evolution, however, is poorly understood. Most scholarly attention has been paid to the period after 1850, when coffee rose to economic dominance, or to the period since 1880, when large-scale European immigration turned the city of Sao Paulo into one of the largest metropolises in the world. This book thus provides the first comprehensive portrait of the economy and people of Sao Paulo during the critical transition from the traditional eighteenth-century...

In recent years, the study of James Madison and his contributions to early American politics has enjoyed a growing audience among scholars and students of modern American politics. Not only did Madison establish the fundamental American concept of pluralism, his appreciation of the logic of institutional design as a key to successful democratic reform still influences modern theory and research. This book evaluates the legacy of James Madison as the product of a scholarly politician--a politician who thought carefully about institutions in the context of action. It brings together thoughtful...

The Political Economy of Protection explains why countries, especially developing countries, change their trade policies over the course of history. It does so through an interdisciplinary approach, which borrows analyses from both political science and economics. While the central focus of this book is to explain historical changes in trade policy in one country, Chile, it is broadly relevant for students, scholars, and trade specialists interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the politics and economics of international trade. Given the intensifying public debates about the...

This book offers new topics and new perspectives on the economic history of Argentina before the 1930 Depression. It focuses on the evolution of early industrialization in a country primarily associated with cattle-ranching and agriculture, and single-mindedly characterized as a case of a successful export economy. Taking an original approach, the book cross-examines traditional economic issues such as production and finances, and new cultural patterns, such as consumption, the role of women, paternalism, and ideology. The first years of Argentina's industrialization, from the 1870s to the...

This book studies the development of banks and stock and bond exchanges in Sao Paulo, Brazil, during an era of rapid economic diversification. It assesses the contribution of these financial institutions to that diversification, and argues that they played an important role in Sao Paulo's urbanization and industrialization by the start of the twentieth century. It finds that government regulatory policy was important in limiting and shaping the activities of these institutions, but that pro-development policies did not always have their intended effects. This is the first book on Sao Paulo's...

In recent years, the study of James Madison and his contributions to early American politics has enjoyed a growing audience among scholars and students of modern American politics. Not only did Madison establish the fundamental American concept of pluralism, his appreciation of the logic of institutional design as a key to successful democratic reform still influences modern theory and research. This book evaluates the legacy of James Madison as the product of a scholarly politician--a politician who thought carefully about institutions in the context of action. It brings together thoughtful...