ABSTRACT
Keynes famously argued that the world was ruled by ideas and little else. For him the power of vested interests was greatly overstated. Even if one believes that Keynes’ faith in the power of ideas is exaggerated it seems reasonable to suppose that ideas influence policies to some extent. Yet, the history of ideas, including economic ideas, in Latin America has been traditionally neglected. In his classic book on Brazilian economic development, Celso Furtado suggested that, in part, the relative backwardness of Brazil with respect to the United States was the result of the economic ideas of their respective founding fathers. Furtado contrasted Alexander Hamilton’s early defense of industrialization with the economic liberalism of José da Silva Lisboa, the Viscount of Cairú. Liberal economic policies halted the industrial beginnings in Brazil, according to this view.2
