The Foreign Influence and the Ideas of Bernardo Souza Franco on Regional and National Banking: Pará-Brazil (1846-1848)

Abstract

This paper deals with Souza Franco’s ideas on banking at regional and national levels. It aims to present his diagnosis on the Brazilian banking system; to analyze his arguments in defense of the creation of banks in Brazil and in the province of Pará; and to identify aspects that indicate the assimilation of foreign ideas and experiences and their adaptation to the Brazilian reality. In the first case, it will be analyzed a series of five articles on the creation of a commercial bank in the province of Pará published in 1846 in Treze de Maio, a local newspaper. In the second case, it will be considered the diagnosis and proposal on the Brazilian banking system presented in the book Os bancos do Brasil (The banks of Brazil), originally published in 1848. The arguments of Souza Franco presented in the texts analyzed in this paper reveal that foreign economic ideas were known as well as the experiences coming from abroad. This knowledge was critically assimilated and adapted to regional and national circumstances. However, it does not imply that this meant qualitative changes in the economic and political structure of the Brazilian empire.