O Café como motor primário da insdústria: estudo bibliográfico e documental sobre o início do complexo industrial paulista no final do século XIX e início do XX

Abstract

The coffee-based economy was directly associated with the formation of the São Paulo industrial complex between the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century; this process of industrialization laid the foundations for Brazilian economic development whose effects reverberate into the present. This study seeks to examine how capital accumulated within the coffee sector contributed to the consolidation of industry in São Paulo. Grounded in a materialist perspective of economic history, the research engages with the works of João Manuel Cardoso de Mello, Caio Prado Júnior, and Emília Viotti da Costa, among others, emphasizing the articulation between export-oriented agriculture, the financial system, railway expansion, and the formation of the domestic market. It advances the hypothesis that São Paulo’s industrialization did not constitute a rupture with the agro-export model, but rather emerged as a historical unfolding of the dynamics of capital accumulation and the transformations in social relations of production generated by the coffee economy.