As partes de um mosaico: a expansão do Banco de Crédito Real de Minas Gerais entre 1889 e 1930

Abstract

This dissertation analyses the expansion undertaken by the Banco de Crédito Real de Minas Gerais from its foundation in 1889 until 1930, highlighting not only its growth in terms of financial resources and banking activities in general, but also the increase in its number of branches. Over the period examined here, the institution established twenty-seven branches, twenty-six in the state of Minas Gerais and one in Rio de Janeiro. In the first part, we outline a general panorama of the genesis of coffee growing in Brazil, identifying the main producing states and the position of importance and prominence that coffee occupied in the Brazilian economy as early as the nineteenth century. In the second part, we indicate the importance that credit and the development of a banking system played in the expansion of coffee growing in Brazil, showing how the initially incipient nature of credit in the country restrained, to a certain extent, the development of coffee cultivation. In this sense, we highlight the emergence of the Banco de Crédito Real de Minas Gerais in Juiz de Fora, which fostered the economic and financial development of the region, in dialogue with the works of the historian Anderson Pires. Based on this Brazilian and regional economic framework, in the third part we engage with the historian John D. Wirth in order to understand the dynamics of Minas Gerais and, through the cross-referencing of diverse sources, we delineate the profile of the municipalities in which branches of the Banco de Crédito Real de Minas Gerais were established. This demonstrates that the process of expansion did not occur in an arbitrary manner but, on the contrary, followed a pattern shaped by the conditions of that historical context.