Sugar plantations in the formation of Brazilian society : Bahia, 1550-1835 / Stuart B. Schwartz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schwartz, Stuart B., author.

Series:

Cambridge Latin American studies ; 52.

Cambridge Latin American studies ; 52

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sugar trade--Brazil--Bahia (State)--History.

Sugar trade.

Plantations--Brazil--Bahia (State)--History.

Plantations.

Slavery--Brazil--Bahia (State)--History.

Slavery.

Bahia (Brazil : State)--Race relations.

Bahia (Brazil : State).

Bahia (Brazil : State)--Social conditions.

Bahia (Brazil : State)--Economic conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiii, 616 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This study examines the history of the sugar economy and the peculiar development of plantation society over a three hundred year period in Bahia, a major sugar plantation zone and an important terminus of the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing on little-used archival sources, plantations accounts, and notarial records, Professor Schwartz has examined through both quantitative and qualitative methods the various groups that made up plantation society. While he devotes much attention to masters and slaves, he views slavery ultimately as part of a larger structure of social and economic relations. The peculiarities of sugar-making and the nature of plantation labour are used throughout the book as keys to an understanding of roles and relationships in plantation society. A comparative perspective is also employed, so that studies of slavery elsewhere in the Americas inform the analysis, while at many points direct comparisons of the Bahian case with other plantation societies are also made.

Contents:

Part I. Formations, 1500-1600

The sugar plantation: from the Old World to the New

A wasted generation: commercial agriculture and Indian laborers

First slavery: from Indian to African

Part II. The Bahian Engenhos and their World

The Recôncavo

Safra: the ways of sugar making

Workers in the cane, workers at the mill

The Bahian sugar trade to 1750

A noble business: profits and costs

Part III. Sugar Society

A colonial slave society

The planters: masters of men and cane

The cane farmers

Wage workers in a slave economy

The Bahian slave population

The slave family and the limitations of slavery

Part IV. Reorientation and Persistence, 1750-1835

Resurgence

The structure of Bahian slaveholding

Important occasions: the war to end Bahian slavery

Appendixes

A. The problem of Engenho Sergipe do Conde

B. The estimated price of white sugar at the mill in Bahia

C. The value of Bahian sugar exports, 1698-1766.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Bibliography: p. 581-592.

ISBN:

9780511870712

051187071X

9780511665271

051166527X

Publisher Number:

2027/heb02795 hdl