Feeding the city : from street market to liberal reform in Salvador, Brazil, 1780-1860 / Richard Graham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Graham, Richard, 1934-

Series:

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture.

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Produce trade--Brazil--Salvador--History.

Produce trade.

Food supply--Government policy--Brazil--Salvador.

Food supply.

Salvador (Brazil)--Government policy.

Salvador (Brazil).

Salvador (Brazil)--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (353 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, c2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

On the eastern coast of Brazil, facing westward across a wide magnificent bay, lies Salvador, a major city in the Americas at the end of the eighteenth century. Those who distributed and sold food, from the poorest street vendors to the most prosperous traders—black and white, male and female, slave and free, Brazilian, Portuguese, and African—were connected in tangled ways to each other and to practically everyone else in the city, and are the subjects of this book. Food traders formed the city's most dynamic social component during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, constantly negotiating their social place. The boatmen who brought food to the city from across the bay decisively influenced the outcome of the war for Brazilian independence from Portugal by supplying the insurgents and not the colonial army. Richard Graham here shows for the first time that, far from being a city sharply and principally divided into two groups—the rich and powerful or the hapless poor or enslaved—Salvador had a population that included a great many who lived in between and moved up and down. The day-to-day behavior of those engaged in food marketing leads to questions about the government's role in regulating the economy and thus to notions of justice and equity, questions that directly affected both food traders and the wider consuming public. Their voices significantly shaped the debate still going on between those who support economic liberalization and those who resist it.

Contents:

The city on a bay

From streets and doorways

Connections

"People of the sea"

The grains market

The cattle and meat trade

Contention

"The true enemy is hunger" : the siege of Salvador

A tremor in the social order

Meat, manioc, and Adam Smith

"The people do not live by theories".

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-292-78468-6

OCLC:

700452757