POLITICAL ANATOMY OF A BANKING CRISIS, RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, FIRST HALF OF 1875Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyze the Brazilian parliamentary debate on the State’s intervention in the banking crisis of 1875. It fits into the set of contributions that deal with the reaction of the political world to economic crises. Its main objective is to understand the different views of the crisis that were established in parliament, in order to identify, in practice, how economic arguments were mixed with political interests in defining the State’s performance at a time of difficulty for the empire’s banks. In other words, it presents how the government and parliament have dealt with this crisis in Brazil. The key documents used in the analysis were the annals of the chamber of deputies and the senate, through which we went through the extensive and intense discussions about the “banks bailout” project.
Keywords Banking crisis; banks; imperial Brazil; 19th century; politics