Paths to wealth: “New Agriculture”, Phisiocracy and Philantropy – a agrarian economy for Brazil

Abstract

This paper poses a few questions that aim to broaden our understanding of the postulates of a “New Agriculture” as advocated by the late enlightenment of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Posed as alternatives for national development, the “New Agriculture” offered options for rural economies based on scientific, social, and intellectual ideas discussed among a circle of thinkers. Such innovations were experimentally tested and published as textbooks to improve farmers’ technical proficiency. “There are no education without books”, that was the motto of Friar José Mariano da Conceição Veloso, the editor of Casa Literária do Arco do Cego (1799-1801). In harmony with Physiocracy and its critics and philanthropy, Friar Veloso, alongside colleagues from Lisbon, translated, published, and designed explicitly for the context of Portuguese America, which Veloso believed to know very well.