Most Colombian historians agree that between 1880 and 1886 changes in economic policy and in the constitution bring the Radical period to an end. Monetary policies – the creation of the national bank, the ending of the right of the commercial banks to issue currency, and finally the imposition of the curso forzoso (the forced acceptance of paper money) – are seen by these historians as mechanisms for redirecting investment towards production, reviving the economy, and promoting coffee exports. Political centralism and the new extended Presidential powers and term are seen as essential to national unity, gravely threatened by the federalist anarchy of the free-trade era.

I do not intend to give a full account of all these complexities, crucial as their interaction was in the formation of the contemporary Colombian state and in maintaining its legitimacy. I must concentrate on one part of the Regeneration's economic ‘programme’ and its impact specifically on the expansion of coffee.

I hope to show that economic policy did not have as its objective promoting coffee exports or channelling savings to investment in coffee. Nor did it have a long-term coincidental effect of encouraging the sector, and it is therefore not possible to attribute to it a positive role in the first cycle of expansion. In this chapter I shall show that the opposition to the new policies that came from bankers, importers, and exporters was not derived just from their being now relatively isolated from political power, whereas they had previously been the beneficiaries of official favour. This opposition was much more widely based, and it went far beyond what one would expect if it were just a matter of the mere immediate economic interests of these groups.