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The Influence Of Coffee On The Economy Of Brazil

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For my research essay, I wanted to choose a topic that was related to my major, economics. I wanted to analyze, specifically, an crucial economic aspect of Brazil’s society that still has an important role today. Coffee, historically, has always been a highly demanded commodity around the world. Therefore, a product with such a rich history like coffee, presented itself as an interesting topic to research and analyze the economic contributions coffee had on the Brazilian economy. I wanted to learn more about how the coffee business became one of the most profitable commodity industries in Brazil during the industrialization period. Before beginning research, I knew that coffee is a crucial part of Brazil’s economic structure still today, …show more content…

Coffee’s expansion extended long after Brazilian independence, and the organization of production followed more closely a spontaneous and entrepreneurial logic, and not an extractive one, as seen when Brazil was under the control of Portugal. Joana Naritomi and her colleagues suggest in their article, "Institutional Development and Colonial Heritage within Brazil," “Coffee is closely associated with the industrialization process and the political changes brought by the republic in 1889.” I found that coffee helped in modernizing Brazil by “favoring European immigration as labor recruits, encouraging foreign investment, creating domestic capital for investment, promoting railroad construction as well as port renovation, introducing new technologies, accelerating entrepreneurial activity, investing burgeoning profits into industrialization, fostering a dynamic bourgeoisie, opening and populating west, and accelerating integration into the world capitalist economy.” From my research, I learned about not only the economic impacts, but the social and political impacts coffee had on Brazilian …show more content…

Beginning my research, I found there was a two-sided argument being debated between scholars surrounding coffee’s negative and positive contributions to Brazil. I noticed that much of the positive arguments were heavily supported and many helped to dismantle previous negative sided arguments. Therefore, I focused on the positive aspects of coffee, and furthermore, I found that the economic contributions also went hand-in-hand with the social and political areas that were also transforming in Brazil. First, I needed to find sufficient evidence to support the claims that coffee differs from other colonial resource booms, such as gold and sugar and was not another temporary boom episode. It was not hard to see that coffee has had immense long-term impacts on Brazil’s political, social, and economic sectors, as it has secured Brazil’s position as the world’s largest coffee producer since the 1870s. To lead my research and examine my question, I used Colgate University’s library databases to find online journal articles and paperback books that provided more insight on my initial research question. I used databases such as JSTOR, the “International bibliography of social sciences”, and “Econlit”, in order to look into the social, political,

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