Amaro Cavalcanti e os caminhos da industrialização brasileira

The purpose of this paper is to recover and to systematize the manifestations of Brazil's industrialist thought at the end of Empire and during the Republic's first decade, through the ideas of the intellectual and politician Amato Cavalcanti, viewed by historiography as one of its main representatives in that period. During his lifetime, Amato Cavalcanti never ceased to believe that industrialization would be the cure for all existing evils within Brazilian society, and, as a politician in the National Congress, he did not spare efforts in defending his ideas and in arguing for the adoption of economic policies geared to the protection of the country's infant industries. Through a critical assessment of his economic works, we attempt to better understand his ideas, pleas and arguments related to protectionism and to the State's role in the economy. By doing this, we intend not only to rescue the thoughts of a representative of industrialism at the beginning of the twentieth century, but also to situate his ideas on Brazil's industrialization within a historical perspective.