Epidemics and Economic Performance

What are the economic consequences of epidemics? More specifically, what was effect on the Brazilian economy when the yellow fever and cholera epidemics struck in the 1850s? These are important questions for this project because historians do not know the extent of damage that this period of epidemics caused Brazil.

The Brazilian government did not collect economic indicators like governments do today. I have to rely on a few, less than perfect, indicators of economic activity. This week I turned to shipping with the assumption that increasing shipping rates, and especially increasing tonnage rates, means that goods were being transported for a growing economy. I am also interested in the total number of ships and the number of seamen who sailed those ships. These data came from the Ministro da Fazenda that began recording and printing data on shipping that it taxed in 1852.

The graph above shows the total number of ships that entered Brazil arriving from foreign ports. This was called “long course” (longo curso) shipping and was dominated by foreign shipping companies, a large part British. It was distinguished from the coastal shipping industry (cabonagem) because Brazilian laws largely restricted local routes to nationally owned vessels. As the illustration shows, there was a substantial increase in the number of ships at the end of the 1840s, a fall in the early 1850s, and then a recovery. The yellow line shows that yellow fever struck at the time that the number of ships declined. Cholera, on the other hand, did not accompany a downturn in the number of ships. I believe that because yellow fever infected mostly foreigners, and was especially deadly among sailors who spent much time in the mosquito infected harbors, shipping suffered. With a few exceptions, cholera was the most deadly in places that were not directly on the coast. Many sailors died from cholera, but I believe they were more likely to (unintentionally) get clean water than to avoid the mosquitoes that led to yellow fever.

In the following two graphs, we can see the tonnage and number of seamen who entered Brazil from foreign ports. These graphs broadly follow the trends of the previous graph, but they also add another interesting trend. It seems that ships were becoming larger in the 1850s and were able to carry more tonnage and, possibly, smaller crews. Nevertheless, yellow fever either correlated with a marked decline (for seamen) or fluctuation without growth (for tonnage).

Another useful exercise is to separate the busiest Brazilian ports to look at the connection between disease and shipping more closely. Yellow fever, that struck in 1849 and carried on into the early 1850s (and again, to a lesser degree, in the late 1850s), was worse in certain ports. Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bahia, and Pernambuco (Recife) suffered many deaths, but Rio Grande do Sul did not.

We would expect that the ports that were harder hit would have seen a greater decline in foreign shipping during yellow fever. Surprisingly, this was not the case. In fact, the one province that was spared from yellow fever, Rio Grande do Sul, saw the biggest declines in shipping. On the other hand, the rest of the ports did not see large increases during this period, suggesting yellow fever may have dampened the rapid growth that had occurred in the late 1840s.

Percentage Change in Foreign Shipping for Six Brazilian Ports, 1847-1851 (by Ship, Tonnage, and Crew Amounts)
	Ships	Tonnage	Seamen
Rio Grande do Sul	87	66	96
São Paulo	80	99	85
Rio de Janeiro	98	109	109
Pernambuco	105	110	116
Bahia	111	99	125
Pará	134	142	133
Source: Relatorios do Ministro de Fazenda, 1847-1849, available at: http://www.crl.edu/brazil/ministerial/fazenda. Table includes arriving ships.

Finally, we can turn to coastal shipping to see if there might have been a connection between the cholera epidemic and national trade. Like the yellow fever epidemic before, the cholera epidemic of 1855-56 also struck unevenly. Cholera was especially bad in Rio Grande do Sul, Bahia, Pernambuco and Pará, unpleasant in Rio de Janeiro, but spared São Paulo (a map). In these cases we do see the changes that one would expect. All ports show either declines or small growth, with São Paulo having the largest (albeit still moderate) increases. We cannot look at any possible connection between foreign shipping and the cholera epidemic because the government stopped distinguished ships from foreign or national sources at the port level after 1852.

Percentage Change in Coastal Shipping for Six Brazilian Ports, 1854-1857 (by Ship and Tonnage Amount)
	Ships	Tonnage
Rio Grande do Sul	82	93
São Paulo	116	103
Rio de Janeiro	96	101
Pernambuco	41	74
Bahia	91	91
Pará	102	94
Source: Relatorios do Ministro de Fazenda, 1847-1849, available at: http://www.crl.edu/brazil/ministerial/fazenda. Table includes arriving ships.