Viscount Maua and the Empire of Brazil

Viscount Mauá and the Empire of Brazil: A Biography of Irineu Evangelista de Sousa (1813–1889) by Anyda Marchant recovers the remarkable life of Brazil’s most famous 19th-century entrepreneur and, through him, reopens the history of the Brazilian Empire under Dom Pedro II. Mauá—banker, industrialist, railroad builder, and Amazon navigator—embodied Brazil’s drive toward modernization in an era too often dismissed as stagnant. By situating him within the political and economic world of the Second Reign and the wider Atlantic economy, Marchant counters the notion that Brazil “had no history” before the 20th century, showing instead how an outward-looking capitalist shaped a non-revolutionary but dynamic empire.

The biography draws on a wide array of sources: the vivid travel accounts of figures like John Luccock, Maria Graham, Robert Walsh, and Charles Darwin; Brazilian memoirs and diaries from Joaquim Nabuco, members of the Cotegipe circle, and André Rebouças; as well as imperial decrees, museum holdings, and private business archives. Especially valuable are Mauá’s own letters—preserved in family collections and in a rare 1861 press-copied volume—addressed to partners in Rio, Montevideo, London, and Manchester, alongside critical modern studies by scholars such as Lidia Besouchet and J. F. Normano. Marchant reconstructs Mauá’s networks across Brazil, the Río de la Plata, and Britain, setting his ventures against the backdrop of slavery, immigration, rail and port development, and imperial court politics.

Documentary rather than anecdotal, the book acknowledges the limits of the surviving record but nonetheless offers a richly detailed, archive-based portrait. By restoring Mauá to the center of Brazil’s 19th century, Viscount Mauá and the Empire of Brazil highlights the country’s contested modernity, recovers a native business history too often overshadowed by British accounts, and reveals the ambitions and setbacks of a man who became a symbol of Latin America’s first age of industrial capitalism.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.