ABSTRACT
The life and work of Friedrich List provide many good reasons and pretexts for further exploring the richness of his legacy. This chapter shows that the relevance of List can be assessed through a close look at the contributions made by other authors or at the research subjects for which It focuses on different historical moments or episodes, selected from the author's previous research into the history of economic thought in Portugal and Brazil, whose interpretation and contextualization benefited from a consideration of List’s legacy and historiography. These encounters with List are related to the following topics: the Methuen Treaty signed between Portugal and Britain in 1703; the influence of American protectionist economic literature on early nineteenth-century Portuguese authors; and the protectionist arguments put forward by the economists of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America – ECLA. Economies need to be seen in their political context if one wishes to consider and understand their relative successes and failures.
