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The Story of Brazilian Commerce 253

On the whole, there was a general increase in Brazilian
commerce. Compared to the period 1833-1843, the ten year
period 1883-1893 shows foreign commerce increased in
value to 600 per cent.

During these sixty years under consideration, the sources
of imports were Great Britain, France, the United States,
and Portugal. After 1862, there was a relative decline in
North American imports in Brazil. On the other hand, the
countries of destination of exports were, during the same
period, Great Britain, the United States, France, and
Germany.

The chief exports were coffee, sugar, cotton, hides, and
rubber. In the early seventies, cotton took second place
from sugar. This was due to the accidental circumstance
of a temporary substitution of Brazilian cotton for American
cotton during the Civil War between the States.

Each of these products would have an interesting story
to tell. Let us consider, however, only coffee, the leading
article of Brazilian export for over a century. Coffee had
been an agricultural product of the country a hundred years
before it had been exported, for it had been brought to Brazil
in 1727, and from 1770 was cultivated in the gardens and
orchards of Rio de Janeiro. In those days the markets of the
world were supplied by Asia, Africa, Java, and the Antilles.
With the development of the province of Rio de Janeiro,
exports from its plantations began in the eighteen-twenties.
By 1826 Brazilian coffee was already 20 per cent of the
world’s supply. In the fifties, the share was broadened to
40 per cent; the Parahyba Valley was then at the height of
its prosperity. At the end of the Empire, Brazilian coffee
reached 50 per cent of the total; but the adaptation of the
paulista plateau with its red soil, the terra roxa, and the
building of the port of Santos led Brazilian coffee to the

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