Suchergebnisse

In the middle of the 19th century Portuguese economic backwardness was apparent to the most attentive intellectuals who tried to analyse its causes. António Oliveira Marreca (1805-1889), an economist and politician, was one of them. At first he supported free trade, but as time went by he became closer to the nationalist, protectionist doctrines. His arguments reveal an impressive similarity to the economic views of Friedrich List (1789-1846), though Marreca had never showed to be aware of List's writings. However Marreca's analysis of the effects of Portuguese economic dependence from England - an important cause of Portuguese backwardness in his opinion - and the very concepts he applies - namely the concept of nation -are extremely close to the ideas developed by the German economist. As far as economic policy is concerned, Marreca's prescriptions were also definitly similar to the policies advocated by List. Both emphasized the need of a temporary industrial protectionism, no protection for the agricultural sector and the development of a transport network to support the implementation of a national economy.

In 1933, Portugal was officially converted to a corporatist state, a state where it was accepted that the semi-autonomous bodies representing the various branches of economic and social activity would have formal powers in defining public policies. In such a context, an important change also occurred at the level of economic theories and doctrines, in keeping with the novelties emanating from both the legal and political fields.

This text tries to assess the relation between the privatization and transnationalization processes in the Portuguese economy in the last two decades of the 20* century and the early 21st century. It concludes that the privatization process changed the Portuguese economic system from a strong State capitalism to a weakly regulated capitalism, and promoted both passive transnationalization, i. e. the penetration of foreign economic groups into the Portuguese economy, and the formation, restoration or reinforcement of Portuguese economic groups, some of which started an active transnationalization process. All these processes unfolded according to what could be expected in a European and World context, although Portuguese investments abroad presented some specificities, mainly related to the importance of the Portuguese-speaking countries, the network services and strategical alliances with Spanish enterprises.

This paper provides a general view of the evolution of banking in the Portuguese Colonial Empire between the founding of the first Portuguese colonial bank in 1864 and the independence of most Portuguese colonies in 1975. The text summarizes the legal background, presents the banks existing during that period, examines their businesses and discusses their contribution to the economic evolution of the territories under consideration. As the paper's main conclusions, it may be said that: (i) Portuguese colonial banking followed the continental model of government initiative and tight control, not the British model of private initiative without much government control; (ii) the development of Portuguese colonial banking was always mainly a matter of profiting from the opportunities afforded by economic evolution rather than a matter of autonomously fostering the economic development of the territories.