The nineteenth century was an age of basic innovations in communications, including the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, and improved harbor construction. Business interest groups helped to introduce them, to determine their infrastructure, and to regulate them. In some cases they acted on their own or encouraged private endeavor, but more often they used prerogatives to influence the scope and form of government aid. Business interest group prerogatives in communications stemmed from a long historical tradition; they were reinforced by weaknesses of the Brazilian state and by the special expertise and the acknowledged self-interest of group membership. The new means of communications and their infrastructure, which the groups helped shape, would greatly affect the patterns and extent of future Brazilian economic development.

The support of the state was fundamental in the introduction of new communications to Brazil. It aided communications companies with guaranteed interest, subsidies, and tax exemptions and even built or managed communications facilities itself. Contrary to what is often supposed, the support of the Empire for development was ready and generous, particularly in light of the contemporary concept of the limited role of the state. In the period 1867–1877, for example, developmental expenditures, mainly for communications, were several times those of Mexico during the same period and even higher as a proportion of national budget than those of Mexico during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Republic did not significantly increase this support for development. The developmental expenditures of the Empire, however, were aimed overwhelmingly at the expansion of Brazil's traditional export import economy.