Braudel came to Brazil in 1935 as one of the young French scholars who helped found the University of Sao Paulo. He stayed for three years and saw a raw vibrant country that left a powerful impression on him for the rest of his life. There was no nation, above all no Brazilian state. He learned that capitalism was limited and precarious in what it could do in the absence of state support.
Capitalism only triumphs when it becomes identified with the state, when it is the state.
Braudel's argument rested on historic examples of capitalist states like Venice, Holland, England and the United States. Braudel's Mediterranean of 500 years ago was the first modern world economy, brought into closer interaction by rapid advances in military and naval technology. It is a structure in itself. Nevertheless, the role of capitalism in this structure was privileged and limited. If there were certain areas where it elected residence, that is because these were the only areas which favored the reproduction of capital.