William R. Summerhill. Inglorious Revolution

William R. Summerhill begins this engaging book by presenting readers with a puzzle. In the early nineteenth century the newly independent, slave-holding empire of Brazil and its neighboring Spanish-American republics shared several challenges to economic development: poverty, low productivity, and a predominantly agricultural economy. Yet, in contrast to these republics that quickly gained reputations as serial defaulters, Brazil’s government, beginning in 1824, was able to borrow money repeatedly from both foreign and domestic lenders. This creditworthiness resembled that of the rapidly developing economies of Europe and the U.S. Unlike these economies, however, at the end of the nineteenth century Brazil’s “relative financial backwardness” persisted (3). Inglorious Revolution: Political Institutions, Sovereign Debt, and Financial Underdevelopment in Imperial Brazil, based on extensive research in archives and printed sources, deciphers this puzzle by showing how the empire achieved a revolution in public finance and why a revolution in private finance did not come to pass. As the title suggests, Summerhill argues that “in financial terms” Brazil’s break with absolutism was not as complete, or “glorious,” as that which occurred in England in 1688 and that ushered in a commitment to honor sovereign debt, the protection of rights in financial property, and access to incorporation (11).

Backwardness · Debt · Economic growth · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Empire · Political science · Politics · Sovereignty · Underdevelopment · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Finance · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies