sum of both its imports and exports, amounted to a total value of Rs 79.000:000$000 between 1834 and 1839 and increased every year until it reached Rs 472.000:000$000 in 1886 (an annual growth of 3.88% since 1839). In 1859 the balance of payments between imports and exports reaches equilibrium; exports gradually increase relative to imports, and the Empire's balance of trade becomes consistently positive from 1865 on. After 1874, the balance of payments becomes clearly favorable. Most Brazilian exports were agricultural goods. For comparison, between 1850 and 1900 agricultural goods constituted between 73% and 83% of the United States' total exports. Economic growth was perceived in the Brazilian Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which from circa 50.000:000$000 in 1840, reached a figure of 500.000:000$000 in 1889 (an incredible annual growth rate of 4.81% since 1840). Brazilian economic growth, especially after 1850, compared "very well" with that of the United States and the European countries, according to the historian Boris Fausto. Brazil in the last year of the monarchy was a “prosperous and [internationally] respected” country, according to historian Oliveira Lima. The historian Heitor Lyra wrote that: The Empire, from the point of view of progress and material development of the country, was not a period of the backwardness and stagnation with which it is still today charged by many who do not want to work to better learn and know about this period of our History. And the truth is that Brazil was, in fact, and righteously, in this and other aspects, the first Nation of Latin America. This hegemony it would keep until the last day of the Monarchy. The Brazilian per capita income in 1880 was similar to the one of the United States and in 1890 was of $770 (in 1990 US dollars). To give an idea of the economic potential of the country during the Empire, if “it had been able to keep the level of productivity achieved in 1870 and managed to increase exports at a pace equal to the one verified in the second half of 19th century, its per capita income in 1950 would be comparable to the average per capita income the Western European countries, and the country would not have fallen so much behind the others”. That is, at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, the country would not only be richer, and the Brazilian people would have