This article assesses the role of international markets in the brazilian financial crisis of 1890/91 (the crash of the encilhamento). It looks for the impact of the argentine financial crisis in 1890 (the baring crisis) on brazilian access to capital markets. The history of bond yield fluctuations in london for brazilian and argentine debt, exchange rates, data on investment flows and archival and journalistic accounts reveal a close congruence between the argentine and brazilian crises. The effects of the argentine experience carried over to brazil because the open capital and money markets of the period easily transmitted crisis from one economy to another and because fundamental conditions in both economies rendered them similarly vulnerable to fluctuations in capital flows. The article raises this case as a precedent for the contagious financial crises that emerging markets faced at the end of the twentieth century.