The Failed Search for an Entente Cordiale: The Epilogue of the Anglo-Brazilian Relationship in the Mid-1940s
Scholars have long argued that the British debate on whether to assume a new role during Brazil’s transition from an agricultural to an industrialised economy in the mid-twentieth century revolved around the efficacy of maintaining the nation’s expensive
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The Failed Search for an Entente Cordiale: The Epilogue of the Anglo-Brazilian Relationship in the Mid-1940s Alexandre Moreli
Introduction At the start of a three-day trip to Brazil on 7 April 2014, the British chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, taking note of the fact that in 2013 just 1 per cent of the Britain’s exports had gone to this major Latin American economy, used the occasion to unveil new support for British firms exporting to rapidly growing foreign markets. Admitting that Britain had ‘mistakenly’ overlooked Brazil’s potential, and hoping to do more
For their comments and suggestions, I am especially grateful to Thomas Mills, Rory Miller, Pio Penna Filho, Stella Krepp, Jeffrey Taffet, Felipe Loureiro and Leandro Morgenfeld. My work has been possible thanks to funding from FAPERJ (APQ1/2014.1) and MCTI/CNPQ/MEC/CAPES (Ciências Humanas, Sociais e Sociais Aplicadas n° 22/2014). A. Moreli (*) University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 T. C. Mills, R. M. Miller (eds.), Britain and the Growth of US Hegemony in Twentieth-Century Latin America, Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48321-0_9
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business with the locals, the chancellor declared to his hosts: ‘[The British] want to be a big part of your future—just as we were a big part of your past’.1 Osborne’s visit was the first by a British finance minister to Brazil in over 15 years. He concluded his speech by declaring that the South American country was a priority for Britain, and that he particularly wanted the two nations to work together on the basis of their ‘shared history and values’. The chancellor emphasised that he was part of the ‘most pro- Brazil British government for over 70 years’.2 Osborne’s remarks might have reminded his audience of the end of the Second World War, a period when Britain seemed to have turned its back on Brazil. In making this comment, he was referring to the once close political and economic relationship that Britain and Brazil had shared, especially during the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. As several scholars have argued, at least when they do not simply assume that the links between the two countries vanished in the aftermath of the First World War, Brazil’s bilateral relationship with Britain entered a period of acute decline between the wars, before finally disintegrating after 1945.3 This trend persisted even though some political and business links continued (as Rory Miller argues elsewhere in this book), or re-emerged, such as during the Alliance for Progress, or in the terrible case in which British 1 Donna Bowater, ‘George Osborne Outlines Export Lending Plan on Brazil Trip’, Daily Telegraph, 7 April 2014. George Osborne, ‘Britain and Brazil as Partners, Chancellor’s Speech in Brazil, 7 April 2014, www.gov.uk/government/speeches/britain-and-brazil-aspartners-chancellors-speech-in-brazil, accessed 12 Nov. 2019. 2 Osborne, ‘Britain and Brazil as Partners’. 3 Marcelo Abreu, ‘Anglo-Brazilian Ec
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