While his government was instrumental in stabilizing Brazil's economy with the first Funding Loan, it also consolidated an oligarchic political system that would later generate significant challenges.

Campos Sales is remembered as a president who, at a critical moment in Brazilian history, sought to balance economic needs with the political demands of regional elites.

[2] In April 1898, after the electoral result, Campos Sales travelled to Europe with the goal of addressing the serious issue of the country's external debt.

In exchange, the Brazilian government gave the income from the Rio de Janeiro customs as a guarantee, and committed itself not to resort to new external loans.

[7] Campos Sales remarked:[8] I understood that I had to dedicate my government to a purely administrative work, separating it from partisan interests and passions, only to take care of solving the complicated problems that are the legacy of a long past.

[5] Campos Sales also managed to establish a balance of power between the states with the alternation of Minas Gerais and São Paulo residents in the presidency and vice-presidency, called "milk coffee politics".

[13] Although Campos Sales and his minister Joaquim Murtinho policies stabilized finances, it profoundly harmed industry and the population's living standards.

A year later, in 1900, Campos Sales retributed the visit, being received by a large crowd in Buenos Aires, with around 300,000 people from the total 1.2 million inhabitants of the Argentine capital.

Portugal, and later Brazil, argued that the entire area of the northern basin of the Oyapock River belonged to them, while the French claimed the interior of the territory.

[16] After decades of dispute, the Baron of Rio Branco was entrusted with an arbitration treaty, seeking to put an end to the disagreements regarding territorial delimitation.

The French Government tried to introduce the possibility of the arbitrator resorting to a transaction, but Brazil insisted that this be restricted to eliminating ambiguities over the territory, in particular the Oyapock River.

The facts were definitively resolved with the Swiss arbitration ruling in favour of Brazil, the conclusions of which were announced on 1 December 1900 by Walter Hauser.

[16] Campos Sales governed until 15 November 1902, and managed to appoint his successor, electing, on 1 March 1902, Rodrigues Alves, from São Paulo, as president of Brazil, and as vice-president, Silviano Brandão, from Minas Gerais, who died before taking office, being replaced by Afonso Pena.