This book is the first to describe the role of business interest groups, also known as pressure groups, in the development of Brazil during the nineteenth century. Business interest groups strongly affected the modernization and prosperity of agriculture, the pace of industrialisation, and patterns of communications. Although they sometimes initiated enterprises themselves, they most affected development by influencing the scope and direction of government aid. The most important of business interest groups, the commercial associations, also may be seen as institutions through which ties of dependency to better-developed nations overseas were maintained.