by Andre Sanchez

The Baron of Mauá was born on December 28th, 1813, though he was not Baron then of course. He was named Irineu Evangelista de Sousa and was born into a poor Brazilian family.  After his father died his mother remarried, and in order to avoid problems between Irineu and his stepfather, his uncle sent him to Rio de Janeiro at the age of nine.

At the age of fifteen his then employer, Scotsman Richard Caruthers, gave him a position of responsibility and when he was 23 years old was made a partner in the business. During a business trip to England during the height of the industrial revolution he saw things that inspired him to start up his own business.  He was a true entrepreneur, a man ahead of his time, and also a man of vision.

He recognized that Brazil was a large country, and needed distribution systems:  distribution of fuel, distribution of imports and exports and, above all, distribution of people. He realized that these needs would have to be met quickly if Brazil was to expand with the rest of the global expansion taking place at that time. For the distribution of imports and exports, he built a shipyard, and also a foundry to provide the steel in 1845.  Why pay for steel if he could make his own!

As Brazil began to build he saw a need for construction equipment in addition to the steel industry he already controlled, and so started to build cranes. Without cranes there could be no construction. He then turned to lighting and the Rio de Janeiro Gas Illumination Company was his idea.  However, for gas lighting, gas pipes were needed, so he also made these.

In the meantime he had been working on plans for the distribution of people, and he started in Rio de Janeiro itself, with the railroad system to Petropolis.  Railroads were the answer to Brazil’s need for fast transit systems, and Petropolis, 65 K from Rio, was the ideal place to start.  The first section of the Rio to Petropolis railroad was completed in 1852, and the whole railroad in 1883. It is for this railroad that he was created Baron of Mauá.

However, he did not stop there.  He was, after all, a self made man and such men do not rest on their laurels. When he saw that the Brazilian sugar industry was expanding, he built sugar mills. When he saw the future of telegraphy he built a telegraph cable.  But not just any telegraph cable. A transatlantic one. The Baron of Mauá began the construction of a sub-Atlantic telegraph cable from Copacabana beach in 1874 and for that feat was made a viscount.

So it was that a simple thing like a paved highway between Petropolis and Juiz de Fora seemed relatively insignificantly, ye it was the first ever paved highway that Brazil saw. Such was the stature and the achievements of this man that the first paved road in Brazil was regarded almost as inconsequential. Perhaps that was because he was better known for his railroad building.  If a railroad was laid in Brazil he would be involved somewhere. When you consider the size of Brazil, over 91% the land area of the USA (including Alaska) that is saying something for one man!

It was not long before de Sousa had become a very powerful man in Brazil, and he became involved in a variety of important engineering projects.  Not only that but he expanded the banking and investment interests he was involved in, and became known euphemistically as the Banker of Brazil, and probably accurately:  he owned the Bank of Brazil!  After the First Bank of Brazil had failed, he took over and founded the Second Bank of Brazil that is currently Brazil’s national bank.

He became the richest man in the country and his company basically ran the financial interests of Uruguay. He was probably the most powerful man in South America, if not the whole American continent, but his weakness was that the vast majority of his money was invested in banks and other financial institutions. The disastrous closing of the Casa Soutro in 1864 all but ruined him. In Brazil and elsewhere, banks and businesses failed and there was total economic disaster. De Souza did not escape, and the meltdown of his assets was almost total. He was forced to request a moratorium on his debts in 1875, and it was the beginning of the end for him.

One can only imagine the psychological effect such a disaster had on him: a man of drive and power who has seen his world dissolve in front of his eyes. However, he was also a man of integrity and proudly sold as many of his assets and personal possessions as were necessary to pay his creditors, even though he could have declared bankruptcy and absolved personal responsibility.

After paying all of his creditors, he had one house left in which he lived out his days.  That was his so called Mauá palace in his favorite city, Petropolis, to which he had built his first ever railroad. He was a liberal and opened up his beloved Brazil to the outside world with roads, railroads and canals. 

He died in Petropolis in 1889, on the 22nd October, and on the spot where the Secretariat of Industry now fittingly stands:  a sad ending for a man that had done so much for his country. Do they remember him now?  Probably not. The bad are remembered more than the good.

The Baron of Mauá: Irineu Evangelista de Sousa was originally published at http://www.businessmannow.com