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Modernizing Electric Utilities in Brazil: National vs. Foreign Capital, 1889–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2013

Alexandre Macchione Saes
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Abstract

Signs of improvement in the early twentieth-century Brazilian economy enabled a process of urban renewal. One of the most visible features of Brazilian urban modernization was street and house lighting, as well as electricity for tramways and industry. Conflicts between the Canadian company Light and the Brazilian firm CBEE over the supply of urban electricity to Brazil's main economic centers—Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador—mirror the contradictions in the country's capitalist formation during the first decades of the twentieth century. From an emerging market view, and through political debates, this article addresses the development of electric utilities in major Brazilian cities.

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Articles
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Business History Review , Volume 87 , Issue 2 , Summer 2013 , pp. 229 - 253
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Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2013 

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