O desenvolvimento do setor siderúrgico brasileiro entre 1900 e 1940: Crescimento e substituição de importações

Abstract

In the early 20th century, the Brazilian steel-making sector had very little practical meaning. However, when the Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (National Steel Company) was created in 1941, as an answer to the national steel problem, the domestic steel-making industry was much more significant. Indeed, between 1900 and 1940, and especially in the 1920s and 1930s, the Brazilian steel-making sector was able to achieve an important development process. The reconstruction of this process of industrial evolution, centered on the aggregate growth of steel production, on its composition, and on the import substitution it was capable of engendering is the object of this work. Furthermore, the paper evaluates critically the quantitative data available for the sector in the period, complementing and expanding them, and seeks to make a more systematic analytical use of them.