Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T20:22:37.766Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Slavery and Economic Development: Brazil and the United States South in the Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Richard Graham
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin

Extract

All history is comparative. The judgments historians make are derived from some explicit or implicit standard of comparison. Thus, when historians describe the antebellum South in the United States as technically backward, rural, nonindustrial, socially retrograde, and paternalistic, they mean to say that it was so in comparison with the North. When historians of nineteenthcentury Brazil describe it in the same terms, they compare it either to the hegemonic capitalist areas of that period, including the United States North, or to Brazil itself at later periods in its history.

Type
Beyond Slavery
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I gratefully acknowledge the contributions to this article of my students at the Universidade de São Paulo and the Universidade Federal Fluminense where I conducted seminars on this topic. I have also profited from comments made by Mariano Diaz Miranda, Albert Fishlow, Sandra Lauderdale Graham, Barnes Lathrop, Nathaniel Leff, John Lombardi, Fernando Novais, Julius Rubin, Stuart Schwartz, and Joseph E. Sweigart. Financial support was provided by the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin. I presented an earlier version of this study before the Latin American Studies Association in April 1979.

1 Even when some scholars deny the validity of the adjectives, they still compare the South with the North, as do Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., “The Economics of Slavery,” in The Reinterpretation of American Economic History, Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., eds. (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 333–38,Google Scholar an argument subsequently reproduced in their Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974).Google Scholar

2 Furtado, Celso, The Economic Growth of Brazil: A Survey from Colonial to Modern Times, de Aguiar, Ricardo W. and Drysdale, Eric Charles, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 107–14.Google Scholar Within Brazil it has become common practice to compare the Paraíba Valley and its port city of Rio de Janeiro with the allegedly more progressive, industrializing west-central part of the state of São Paulo and the city by that name: e.g., Cano, Wilson, Raízes da concentraçāo industrial em São Paulo (São Paulo: Difel, 1977), esp. 20–42, 244–51;Google ScholarDean, Warren, “The Planter as Entrepreneur: The Case of São Paulo,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 46 (05 1966), 143–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Comparisons have also been made between the coffee exporting southeast and the sugar and tobacco regions of the northeast: e.g., Leff, Nathaniel H., “Economic Development and Regional Inequality: Origins of the Brazilian Case,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 86 (05 1972), 243–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Comparative work on slavery and race relations has yielded rich dividends as shown by Degler, Carl, Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1971)Google Scholar and other authors he cites; although a few historians have acknowledged the need to compare the economic performance of the American South to other plantation economies, no one has yet done so systematically: see, e.g., Rothstein, Morton, “The Cotton Frontier of the Antebellum United States: A Methodological Battleground,” Agricultural History, 44 (01 1970), 150, 154, 156, 161, 162;Google Scholar and his The Antebellum South as a Dual Economy: A Tentative Hypothesis,” Agricultural History, 41 (10 1967), 373–82.Google Scholar On the comparative study of plantation systems, see Seminar on Plantation Systems of the New World, Plantation Systems of the New World: Papers and Discussion Summaries, Social Science Monographs, no. 7 (Washington, D.C.: Pan American Union, 1959);Google ScholarWaibel, Leo, “A forma economica de ‘plantage’ tropical,” Egler, Walter Alberto, trans., in Waibel, , Capitulos de geografia tropical e do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 1958), 3150;Google Scholar and Thompson, Edgar T., The Plantation: A Bibliography, Social Science Monographs, no. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Pan American Union, 1959).Google Scholar

4 Engerman, Stanley L. has suggested that comparison of the American South with England or France would lead to similar conclusions. “A Reconsideration of Southern Economic Growth, 1770–1860,” Agricultural History, 49 (04 1975), 345, 351, 353–54.Google Scholar

5 I do not intend to trivialize the argument as to the impact of slavery on development; it surely helped slow development in both areas and, in any event, no one has argued that slavery alone was responsible for underdevelopment in either area. But it has been an implicit if not explicit tenet of many studies that slavery was principally to blame: e.g., Genovese, Eugene D., “The Significance of the Slave Plantation for Southern Economic Development.” Journal of Southern History, 28 (11 1962), 422–37;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWoodman, Harold D., “Economic History and Economic Theory: The New Economic History in America,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 3 (Autumn, 1972), 343;CrossRefGoogle Scholarde Mello, João Manuel Cardoso, “O capitalismo tardio (contribuição à revisão crítica da formação e desenvolvimento da economia brasileira)” (Ph.D. diss., Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 1975). In this article I wish to draw attention to other aspects in the history of economic development that need to be examined.Google Scholar

6 In the notes I have tried to indicate beginning points in the literature: Specialists in either United States or Brazilian history will find many lacunae in their own field but it is hoped that they may discover useful suggestions for reading in the other.

7 North, Douglass C., The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 128.Google Scholar

8 Furtado, , Economic Growth, 164–65, argued that the difference in timing in export strength is the major factor to be considered in the differing records of development in the two countries.Google Scholar

9 The geographical spread of coffee within the province of São Paulo is graphically presented in Milliet, Sérgio, Roteiro do café; análise histórico–demográfica da expansão cafeeira no estado de São Paulo, Estudos Paulistas, no. 1 (São Paulo: n.p., 1938), 2328;Google Scholar similar maps have not been prepared for the province of Rio de Janeiro, but for the distribution of slaves in 1883, see Valverde, Orlando, La fazenda de café esclavista en el Brasil, Cuadernos Geograficos, no. 3 (Merida, Venezuela: Universidad de los Andes, 1965), 41.Google Scholar Maps showing similar movement of slaves and cotton can be found in Fogel, and Engerman, , Time on the Cross, 45;Google Scholar and Gray, Lewis Cecil, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (New York: Peter Smith, 1941), 684, 890–91. Cotton was planted in new areas of the South after slavery, but not with the same impact as in Brazil.Google Scholar

10 On distinctions within the cotton South, see especially Wright, Gavin, The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Norton, 1978), 2022.Google Scholar

11 On shipments on the Paraíba River, see Agassiz, Louis and Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Gary, A Journey to Brazil, 2d ed. (Boston: Ticknorand Fields, 1868), 121.Google Scholar On the difficulty of using the São Paulo rivers for transportation, see de Holanda, Sérgio Buarque, Monçōes, 2d ed., Biblioteca Alfa-Omega, História, no. 8 (São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1976), 4046, 77107.Google Scholar For lack of financial resources governments did little then or later to construct locks and canals to make these rivers navigable; cf. Goodrich, Carter, ed., Canals and American Economic Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961).Google Scholar

12 Olmstead, Frederick Law, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States, Schlessinger, Arthur M., ed. (New York: Knopf, 1953), 128–29, 343–44;Google ScholarTaylor, George Rogers, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860, Economic History of the United States, no. 4 (New York: Harper and Row, 1951), 1516;Google ScholarPhillips, U. B., A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), 12, 5961, 69, 127, 129;Google ScholarMartin, William Eleijus, Internal Improvements in Alabama, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, ser. 20, no. 4 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1902), 2732;Google ScholarSmith, Alfred Glaze, Economic Readjustment of an Old Cotton State: South Carolina, 1820–1860 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1958), 137–38, 143, 153–54;Google ScholarHeath, Milton S., Constructive Liberalism: The Role of the State in Economic Development in Georgia to 1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), 233–34, 239, 249–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Goulart, José Alípio, Tropas e tropeiros na formação do Brasil, Coleão Temas Brasileiros (Rio de Janeiro: n.p., 1961);Google ScholarAlmeida, Luis C., Vida e morte do tropeiro (São Paulo: Martins, 1971);Google ScholarSchmidt, Carlos Borges, Tropas e tropeiros (São Paulo: n.p., 1932);Google ScholarDebret, Jean Baptiste, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil; ou sejour d'un artiste français au Bresil, depuis 1816 jusqu'en 1831 inclusivement, facism. ed., 3 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Record; New York: Continental News, 1965), II, 117,Google Scholar and plate 37; Morse, Richard M., “Some Themes of Brazilian History,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 51 (Spring 1962), 169;Google ScholarMomsen, Richard P. Jr., Routes Over the Serra do Mar: The Evolution of Transportation in the Highlands of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (Rio de Janeiro: privately printed? 1964);Google ScholarLamego, Alberto Ribeiro, O homem e a serra, 2d ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, 1963);Google ScholarJúnior, Caio Prado, The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil, Macedo, Suzette, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 298307, 481Google Scholar n. 42; da Costa, Emília Viotti, Da senzala à colônia, Corpo e Alma do Brasil, no. 19 (São Paulo: Difusăo Europeia do Livro, 1966), 154–73;Google ScholarPetrone, Maria Thereza Schorer, A lavoura canavieira em São Paulo. Expansāo e declínio (1765–1851), Corpo e Alma do Brasil.no. 21 (São Paulo: Difusāo Européia do Livro, 1968), 186222;Google ScholarStein, Stanley J., Vassouras, a Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1900, Harvard Historical Studies, no. 69 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 91101;Google ScholarBragança, Vânia Fróes, “Contribuição para o estudo da crise e extinção do Município de Estrela,” in Ensaios sobre a político e economia da provincia fluminense no século xix, Graham, Richard, ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional for the Universidade Federal Fluminense, 1974), 104–28;Google ScholarMattoon, Robert H. Jr, “Railroads, Coffee, and the Growth of Big Business in São Paulo, Brazil,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 57 (05 1977), 276–77;CrossRefGoogle ScholarNeto, A. R., A Estrada da Graciosa (Rio de Janeiro: Revista Rodovia, 1945);Google ScholarRodrigues, Fulvio C., A Uniāo e Industria, pioneira das estradas de rodagem brasileiras (ensaio) (Rio de Janeiro: Gráfica do “Jornal do Brasil,” 1934).Google Scholar The oxcart had long been used in Brazil but, having a fixed axle, was not suitable for the steep inclines of the coffee region. Sousa, José B., O ciclo do carro de boi no Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Nacional, 1958).Google Scholar Some wagon roads traversed the flat sugar regions of northern Rio de Janeiro province. Donald, Cleveland, “Slave Society and Abolitionism in Campos County, Brazil, 1750–1888” (manuscript in preparation), 88, 93.Google Scholar

14 E.g., Woodman, Harold D., King Cotton and His Retainers: Financing and Marketing the Cotton Crop of the South, 1800–1925 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1968), 152, 188.Google Scholar On southern railroads, see Phillips, , History of Transportation, 132396;Google ScholarBlack, Robert C., III, The Railroads of the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952);Google ScholarCotterill, Robert S., “Southern Railroads, 1850–1860,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 10 (03 1924), 396405;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSmith, , Economic Readjustment, 148, 156–60, 170–76, 191–92;Google ScholarHeath, , Constructive Liberalism, 254–92.Google Scholar

15 On Brazilian railroads, see Graham, Richard, Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil, 1850–1914, Cambridge Latin American Studies, no. 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 5172CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the sources cited therein; Mattoon, , “Railroads”; de Matos, Odilon Nogueira, Café e ferrovias: a evoluçãlo ferroviária de São Paulo e o desenvolvimento da cultura cafeeira, 2d ed., Biblioteca Alfa-Omega, História, no. 2 (São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1974).Google Scholar

16 E.g., Fogel, and Engerman, , Time on the Cross, 191209.Google Scholar

17 Gates, Paul W., The Farmer's Age: Agriculture, 1815–1860, The Economic History of the United States, no. 3 (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 142–44.Google Scholar

18 Whartenby, Franklee Gilbert, Land and Labor Productivity in United States Cotton Production, 1800–1840 (New York: Arno, 1977), 109–12;Google ScholarGates, , Farmer's Age, 135, 136, 144;Google ScholarMoore, John Hebron, Agriculture in Ante-Bellum Mississippi (New York: Bookman Associates, 1958), 114, 121, 165, 167, 169–73, 182–83, 187–89;Google ScholarGray, , History of Agriculture, 792800;Google ScholarSmith, T. Lynn, Brazil: People and Institutions, 3d ed. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963), 372–90;Google ScholarSchmidt, Carlos Borges, Técnicas agricolas primitivas e tradicionais (Rio de Janeiro: Conselho Federal de Cultura, 1976), 91117;Google Scholaridem, O milho e o monjolo; aspectos da civilizaçãlo do milho. Técnicas, utensilios, e maquinaria tradicionais, Documentário da Vida Rural, no. 20 (Rio de Janeiro: Ministerio da Agricultura, Serviço de Informação Agricola, 1967), 3940 and illus. facing p. 32.Google Scholar

19 The quotations are, respectively, from Cano, , Raizes da concentraçãio, 28;Google ScholarMello, , “O capitalismo tardio,” 54.Google Scholar It is well known that slaves worked cotton gins and compresses as well as coffee hulling and drying equipment much of which, in both cases, meant working with complicated steam-driven equipment. Starobin, Robert S., Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 22;Google ScholarBruchey, Stuart, The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607–1861; An Essay in Social Causation (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 173;Google ScholarGraham, , Britain, 4546;Google ScholarLaerne, C. F. van Delden, Brazil and Java: Report on Coffee-Culture in America, Asia, and Africa to H. E. the Minister of the Colonies (London: W. H. Allen, 1885), 310–21;Google ScholarSmith, Herbert H., Brazil—the Amazons and the Coast (New York: Scribner's, 1879), 512–27;Google Scholar and de Escragnolle Taunay, Affonso, História do café no Brasil, 15 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Departamento Nacional do Café, 19391943), VII, 225–82.Google Scholar Brazilian authors have argued that the use of slaves slowed the introduction of such machinery or that the use of the machinery underminded the slave system. Costa, , Da senzala à colonia, 177–88;Google ScholarGorender, Jacob, O Escravismo colonial, Ensaios, no. 29 (São Paulo: Atica, 1978), 563. A comparative study of processing machinery has yet to be made. It is probably true that technical improvements were not as essential to the growth of a slave system as they were to a capitalist ofle based on salaried labor.Google Scholar

20 Gray, , History of Agriculture, p. 197;Google ScholarSmith, T. L., Brazil: People and Institutions, 364–72.Google Scholar

21 Craven, Avery O., Soil Exhaustion as a Factor in the Agricultural History of Virginia and Maryland, 1606–1860, University of Illinois Studies in Social Sciences, vol. 13, no. 1 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1926), 1112, 19, 163;Google ScholarSmith, A. G., Economic Readjustment, 58, 68, 84, 90, 95, 97, 106;Google ScholarFogel, and Engerman, , Time on the Cross, 196–99;Google ScholarMargolis, Maxine, “Historical Perspectives on Frontier Agriculture as an Adaptive Strategy,” American Ethnologist, 4 (02 1977), 4264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The introduction of similar considerations into Brazilian historiography is long overdue for it is still commonplace to speak of the Paraiba Valley as being in decline much earlier than was really the case; and historians of Brazil, as was once the case for those of the South, still ascribe this alleged decline to the “routine” spirit of the planters in the older area and to their supposed irrationality in holding onto outdated practices, but in doing so, these scholars ignore the relative costs of land, capital, and labor that may have made such decisions highly rational. Stein, , Vassouras, 214;Google ScholarMello, , “O capitalismo tardio,” 80.Google Scholar

22 Gray, , History of Agriculture, 199, 700701, 801807;Google ScholarGates, , Farmer's Age, 134, 135–37, 140, 144;Google ScholarMoore, , Agriculture, 112–21, 145, 164205, 239Google Scholar n. 35; Taylor, Rosser H., “The Sale and Application of Commercial Fertilizers in the South Atlantic States to 1900,” Agricultural History, 21 (01 1947), 4648;Google Scholaridem, Commercial Fertilizers in South Carolina,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 29 (04 1930), 179–89;Google ScholarJordan, Weymouth T., “The Peruvian Guano Gospel in the Old South,” Agricultural History, 24 (10 1950), 211–21;Google ScholarScarborough, William K., The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 175;Google ScholarStein, , Vassouras, 3334, 50;Google ScholarSchmidt, , Técnicas, 159–63.Google Scholar The precise extent to which scientific practices were used in the South is the subject of some debate among North American historians, partly because they have not firmly decided what the comparative standard will be, that is, how much is a lot? Genovese, Eugene, The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South (New York; Pantheon, 1965), 8599,Google Scholar has convincingly denied that there was widespread use of fertilizer in the South, but my point here relates to a comparison with Brazil. See also Smith, A. G., Economic Readjustment, 88100.Google ScholarGorender, , Escravismo colonial, 222,Google Scholar relying too heavily on Genovese, also fails to consider the difference in degree between Brazil and the American South. Rubin, Julius, “The Limits of Agricultural Progress in the Nineteenth-Century South,” Agricultural History, 49 (04 1975), 362–72,Google Scholar has argued that not slavery but climate inhibited the spread of many of these practices in the South. More research in Brazil may uncover a use of fertilizer there greater than my estimate. Manure was used systematically on tobacco fields in the colonial South and in colonial Brazil. Gray, , History of Agriculture, 198–99, 801–2;Google Scholar and Lugar, Catherine, “The Portuguese Tobacco Trade and Tobacco Growers of Bahia in the Late Colonial Period,” in Essays Concerning the Socioeconomic History of Brazil and Portuguese India, Alden, Dauril and Dean, Warren, eds. (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1977), 33, 55, 6768.Google Scholar There is also some evidence that sugar planters in nineteenth-century Campos used manure. Donald, , “Slave Society,” 96.Google Scholar

23 Gates, , Farmer's Age, 138, 143–44;Google ScholarFogel, and Engerman, , Time on the Cross, 198;Google ScholarScarborough, , Overseer, 136;Google ScholarO Auxiliador da Industria National (Rio de Janeiro, 18351888);Google Scholarde Janeiro, Rio, Instituto Fluminense de Agriculture, Revista Agricola (18691891);Google Scholarde Lacerda Werneck, Francisco Peixoto, Memoria sobre a fundação e costeio de umafazenda na provincia do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Laemmert, 1847);Google ScholarStein, , Vassouras, 121–24;Google ScholarWirth, John D., Minas Gerais in the Brazilian Federation, 1889–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), 192201.Google Scholar The “efficient” management of large numbers of workers was a practice common to both coffee and cotton plantations. See Fogel, and Engerman, , Time on the Cross, 200209;Google ScholarStein, , Vassouras, 163;Google ScholarLaerne, , Brazil and Java, 253382.Google Scholar

24 On the hesitations see Genovese, , Political Economy of Slavery, 221–39. My own view of “development” would focus more on human needs and a just social order; but that was not the general nineteenth-century attitude either in Brazil or in the South.Google Scholar

25 Starobin, , Industrial Slavery, 1325;Google ScholarClark, Victor, “Manufactures during the Antebellum and War Periods,” in The South in the Building of the Nation, Vol. V of Economic History, Ballagh, James C., ed. (Richmond: Southern Historical Publications Society, 1909), 313–35,Google Scholar esp. 331; Russel, Robert Royal, Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism, 1840–1861, University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, vol. 9, nos. 1–2 (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1924), 225–30;Google ScholarBateman, Fred and Weiss, Thomas, “Manufacturing in the Antebellum South,” in Research in Economic History: An Annual Compilation of Research, Uselding, Paul, ed. (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1976), 1:3;Google Scholaridem, A Deplorable Scarcity: The Failure of Industrialization in the Slave Economy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981);Google ScholarDew, Charles B., Ironmaker to the Confederacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966);Google ScholarNormano, J. F., Brazil, a Study of Economic Types (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), 97103;Google ScholarStein, Stanley J., The Brazilian Cotton Manufacture. Textile Enterprise in an Underdeveloped Area, 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 177;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDean, Warren, The Industrialization of São Paulo, 1880–1945, Latin American Monographs, no. 17 (Austin: University of Texas Press for the Institute of Latin American Studies, 1969), 380;Google ScholarGraham, , Britain, 125–59.Google Scholar

Parker, William N., in his article “Slavery and Southern Economic Development: An Hypothesis and Some Evidence,” Agricultural History, 44 (01 1970), 115–26, makes the point that it is important to distinguish among small, medium, and large-scale industries and that medium-size factories may be most conducive to economic development; he then presents an exhaustive list of manufacturing enterprises in the South. Were the sources available in Brazil, I am sure no list equivalent in size could be compiled.Google Scholar

26 Cf. Bruce, Kathleen, Virginia Iron Manufacture in the Slave Era (1940; rpt. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1968), esp. p. 452,Google Scholar map showing location of iron furnaces, with Callaghan, William S., “Obstacles to Industrialization: The Iron and Steel Industry in Brazil during the Old Republic” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, in progress).Google Scholar

27 Costa, , Da senzala à colonia, 154220;Google ScholarCardoso, Fernando Henrique, Capitalismo e escravidāo no Brasil meridional. O negro na sociedade escravocrata do Rio Grande do Sul, Corpo e Alma do Brasil, no. 8 (São Paulo: Difusāo Européia do Livro, 1962), 133–62, 186204;Google ScholarFernandes, Florestan, A Revoluçãlo burguesa no Brasil: ensaio de interpretação sociológica (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 1975), 86146;Google ScholarCano, , Raizes da concentração, 3142.Google Scholar See references to these same themes among the United States historians cited by Engerman, Stanley L., “Marxist Economic Studies of the Slave South,” Marxist Perspectives, 1:1 (Spring, 1970), 150, 154–56, 163 n. 26.Google Scholar

28 Starobin, , Industrial Slavery, esp. 11, 15, 126, 168–73, 182–86.Google Scholar Unfortunately, Starobin did not make the essential distinction on size of factories, but see p. 50 on their rural locations and cf. p. 59; on the profitability of using slaves in industry, see pp. 146ff., although some of his calculations and argument may be subject to question, as on pp. 156 and 186. Other sources on the use of slaves in industries include Smith, A. G., Economic Readjustment, 126–27;Google ScholarBruce, , Virginia Iron Manufacture, 231–58;Google ScholarDew, Charles B., “Disciplining Slave Ironworkers in the Ante-bellum South: Coercion, Conciliation, and Accommodation,” American Historical Review, 79 (04 1974), 393418;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLander, Ernest M., The Textile Industry in Antebellum South Carolina (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), 4344, 49, 8893;Google ScholarTerrill, Tom E., “Eager Hands: Labor for Southern Textiles, 1850–1860,” Journal of Economic History, 36 (03 1976), esp. 86;Google Scholar and Wright, Gavin, “Cheap Labor and Southern Textiles before 1880,” Journal of Economic History, 39 (09 1979), 655–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On one point evidence from the South supports the views advanced for Brazil: Sabotage and other forms of resistance were a distinct possibility. See Starobin, , Industrial Slavery, 42, 7791,Google Scholar and Lander, , Textile Industry, 35.Google Scholar

29 Starobin, , Industrial Slavery, 12, 128ff.;Google Scholar Dew, “Disciplining Slave Ironworkers.” The comparative costs of renting as against buying a slave are calculated for the United States by Evans, Robert Jr, “The Economics of American Negro Slavery, 1830–1860,” in Universities-National Bureau Committee for Economic Research, Aspects of Labor Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 185243,Google Scholar and for Brazil by Pedro Carvalho de Mello, “The Economics of Labor in Brazilian Coffee Plantations, 1850–1888,” University of Chicago, Department of Economics, Report no. 7475–8 (Chicago: 1974); but see Slenes, Robert Wayne, “The Demography and Economics of Brazilian Slavery, 1850–1888” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1975), 249–54.Google Scholar On the use of slaves in industry in Brazil, see Stein, , Brazilian Cotton Manufacture, 51;Google Scholar and on hiring out slaves in Brazil for domestic duties, see Graham, Sandra Lauderdale, “Female Domestic Servants in Rio de Janeiro, 1860–1910” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, in progress).Google Scholar

In nineteenth-century Brazil, perhaps even more than in the South, slaves often hired themselves out, finding their own work to do for a wage and returning a fixed sum to their masters. These slaves, like those of southern cities, acted virtually as free men, arranged their own work and wages, often secured their own housing, and sometimes acted as contractors, hiring free laborers or employing other slaves. Although the practice was widespread in both southern and Brazilian cities, it was eventually outlawed in the South, whereas it was licensed in Brazil. Freyre, Gilberto, Sobrados e mucambos 3d ed., 2 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1961), 500;Google ScholarTannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen, the Negro in the Americas (New York: Knopf, 1947), 5861;Google ScholarKarash, Mary C., “Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1972), 166, 462–81;Google ScholarWade, Richard C., Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 3854;Google ScholarStarobin, , Industrial Slavery, 135–37;Google ScholarWood, Peter H., Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolinafrom 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York: Norton, 1975), 207–11, 214–15, 229.Google Scholar I have found no evidence that skilled whites in Brazil objected to the self-hire system, as they did in the United States South. Eaton, Clement, The Growth of Southern Civilization, 1790–1860 (New York: Harper, 1961), 167;Google ScholarStarobin, , Industrial Slavery, 128,Google Scholar and 128n. Surely the relationship between employer and employee is qualitatively different from that between owner and owned; in the hiring-out system, both relationships existed simultaneously, with wide implications for the growth of capitalism which also need to be explored comparatively.

30 North, , Economic Growth, 101–21;Google Scholar but cf. criticisms of his model in Rothstein, , “Cotton Frontier,” 153–54.Google Scholar

31 Wade, , Slavery in the Cities, 243–81.Google ScholarGoldin, Claudia, Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820–1860: A Quantitative History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976),Google Scholar corrects Wade on this score; also see Fogel, and Engerman, , Time on the Cross, 102.Google Scholar

32 Genovese, , Political Economy, 221–35;Google ScholarGraham, Richard, “Causes for the Abolition of Negro Slavery in Brazil: An Interpretive Essay,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 46 (05 1966), 123–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Whether immigrants in Brazil joined abolitionist ranks in large numbers and whether they did so for fear of competition from slave labor is not yet known, but seems doubtful. Bergstresser, Rebecca Baird, “The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1880–1889” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1973);Google Scholar Black Brazilian freedmen complained about immigrants competing with them for jobs rather than vice-versa. Karasch, , “Slave Life,” 398, 555.Google Scholar

33 Moore, Barrington Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon, 1966), 111–55.Google Scholar

34 Sodré, Nelson Werneck, História de burguesia brasileira, Retratos do Brasil, no. 22 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1965), 7788, 142–57;Google ScholarFernandes, , Revolução burguesa, 179–97;Google ScholarCardoso, Ciro F. S., “Sobre os modos de produção coloniais da América,“ in América colonial, Santiago, Theo, ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Pallas, 1975), 110111, makes the point that international dependence and slavery together explain underdevelopment, and criticizes those, especially North American historians, who stress only one half of the formula.Google Scholar

35 Bruchey, Stuart W., Cotton and the Growth of the American Economy, 1700–1860: Sources and Readings (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1967), Table 3–A. The country as a whole did not focus as much on the production of exports as did Brazil, but the South did.Google Scholar

36 Rothstein, , “Cotton Frontier,” 153, 163–64;Google ScholarWoodman, , King Cotton, 150n.;Google ScholarHidy, Ralph W., The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work, 1763–1861, Harvard Studies in Business History, no. 14 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 7475, 105–7, 173–76, 184–89, 254–59, 298301, 359–64;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSmith, A. G., Economic Readjustment, 162.Google Scholar

37 Adams, Ephraim Douglass, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1925);Google ScholarJenkins, Brian, Britain and the War for the Union, (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1974), I, esp. 281305: “Bibliographical Essay.”Google Scholar

38 Stein, , Vassouras, 101–2;Google ScholarGraham, , Britain, 5172, 99105;Google ScholarDuncan, Julian S., Public and Private Operation of Railways in Brazil, Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, no. 367 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932);Google ScholarBlack, , Railroads, 40, 42, 4445;Google ScholarStover, John F., The Railroads of the South, 1865–1900: A Study of Finance and Control (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955), 78;Google ScholarSmith, A. G., Economic Readjustment, 167–70, 176–90;Google ScholarReed, Merl E., “Government Investment and Economic Growth: Louisiana's Ante-Bellum Railroads,” Journal of Southern History, 28 (05 1962), 183201;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHeath, Milton S., “Public Railroad Construction and the Development of Private Enterprise in the South before 1861,” Journal of Economic History, 10 (supplement, 1950), 4053;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHeath, , Constructive Liberalism, 254–92,Google Scholar esp. 287–88; Goodrich, Carter, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 87120, 152–62, 270;Google ScholarCotterill, , “Southern Railroads,” 404–5.Google Scholar

39 I have shown in another study that the proportion of capital goods among Brazil's imports from Great Britain rose steadily from 14 percent in the early 1850s to 37 percent by the 1890s. Graham, , Britain, 330–32. More attention needs to be paid in both areas to where agricultural equipment and industrial machinery were manufactured.Google Scholar

40 Leff, , in his article “Economic Development and Regional Inequality,” 258–59,Google Scholar in effect argues that Brazil's lagging northeast could have brought the result of its export earnings closer home had the area not been part of the Brazilian polity; could the same argument not be made for the American South? Perhaps the secessionists were right. Cf. Huertas, Thomas F., “Damnifying Growth in the Antebellum South,” Journal of Economic History, 39 (03 1979), 98100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Cf. North, , Economic Growth, 244,Google Scholar with Leff, Nathaniel H., “Tropical Trade and Development in the Nineteenth Century: The Brazilian Experience,” Journal of Political Economy, 81 (0506 1973), 682.CrossRefGoogle Scholar North chooses a base year (1830) in the midst of the cotton boom, while Leff uses a period (1826–30) which lies closer to the beginning of the surge in coffee exports; thus comparisons between these two indices are precarious. On regional terms of trade, see Huertas, , “Damnifying Growth,” 97.Google Scholar

42 The difficulties of investigating both the balance of payments and transfers of capital for the nineteenth century are suggested by Imlah, Albert H., “British Balance of Payments and Export of Capital, 1816–1913,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 5:2 (1952), 208–39;Google Scholar also see Saul, S. E., Studies in British Overseas Trade, 1870–1914 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1960), esp. 67;Google ScholarJenks, Leland H., The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (1927; rpt. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973);Google ScholarBruchey, , Roots, 133;Google ScholarRippy, J. Fred, British Investments in Latin America, 1822–1949. A Case Study in the operations of Private Enterprise in Retarded Regions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959), 150–58.Google Scholar

43 Woodman, , King Cotton, 162Google Scholar and passim; Sweigart, Joseph E., “Financing and Marketing Brazilian Export Agriculture: The Coffee Factors of Rio de Janeiro, 1850–1888” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1980);Google ScholarJoslin, David, A Century of Banking in Latin America; To Commemorate the Centenary in 1962 of the Bank of London and South America, Limited (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 163;Google ScholarJones, Charles, “Commercial Banks and Mortgage Companies,” Business Imperialism, 1840–1930: An Inquiry Based on British Experience in Latin America, Platt, D. C. M., ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 1752; Reports on Business Houses, Rio de Janeiro, 1852, Baring Brothers Papers (London), House Correspondence, HC 16.Google Scholar

44 de Aguiar, Pinto, Bancos no Brasil colonial: tentativas de organizaçãlo bancdria em Portugale no Brasil ate 1808, Colegao de Estudos Brasileiros Serie Marajoara, no. 31 (Salvador: Progresso, 1960);Google ScholarLevy, Barbara, Historia dos bancos comerciais no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: IBMEC, 1972);Google ScholarMarchant, Anyda, “A New Portrait of Mauà, the Banker: A Man of Business in Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 30 (11 1950), 411–31;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, A sorte não o permitiu,” Revista do lnstituto Histórico e Geogrdfico Brasileiro, vol. 192 (1946), 4659;Google ScholarJones, , “Commercial Banks,” 3132;Google Scholar Sweigart, “Financing and Marketing”; Smith, A. G., Economic Readjustment, 193217;Google ScholarGreen, George D., Finance and Economic Development in the Old South: Louisiana Banking, 1804–1861 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), 202;Google ScholarFenstermaker, J. van, The Development of American Commercial Banking, 1782–1837, Printed Series, no. 5 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Bureau of Economic and Business Research, 1965), 7795;Google ScholarSparks, Earl Sylvester, History and Theory of Agricultural Credit in the United States (New York: Crowell, 1932), 83111;Google ScholarBruchey, , Roots, 148;Google ScholarHeath, , Constructive Liberalism, 159230.Google Scholar

45 Woodman, , King Cotton, 162–63;Google ScholarGraham, , Britain, 6599, 189–90;Google ScholarMarchant, Anyda, Viscount Mauà and the Empire of Brazil: A Biography of Irineu Evangelista de Sousa (1813–1889). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965);Google ScholarJoslin, , Century of Banking, 6084;Google ScholarJones, , “Commercial Banks,” 18.Google Scholar

46 Smith, A. G., Economic Readjustment, 76, 105, 107, 108;Google ScholarWoodman, , King Cotton, 5253;Google ScholarLaerne, , Brazil and Java, 225;Google ScholarGreenhill, Robert, “Brazilian Coffee Trade,” in Business Imperialism, 1840–1930: An Inquiry Based on British Experience in Latin America, Platt, D. C. M., ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 205;Google Scholarde Mello, Pedro Carvalho, “The Economics of Labor in Brazilian Coffee Plantations, 1850–1888” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1977), 147;Google Scholarde Castro, Helio Oliveira Portocarrero, however, in his article on “Viabilidade economica da escravidao no Brasil: 1880–1888,” Revista Brasileira de Economia, 27 (0103 1973), 49,Google Scholar puts the range at 7 to 10 percent, going on to acknowledge that it was “common” to find coffee planters borrowing at 12 percent in the 1880s; finally, see Leff, Nathaniel H., “Long-term Viability of Slavery in a Backward, Closed Economy,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5 (Summer 1974), 106,CrossRefGoogle Scholar who compares rates of 6 to 8 percent for American cotton planters with 12 to 18 percent for Brazilian coffee growers. See also Homer, Sidney, A History of Interest Rates, 2d ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

The impact of higher interest rates in Brazil on the elevated rate of manumission of slaves and the lower level of care for their health and reproduction have only recently been noted; in addition to works cited above, see Reis, Jaime, “Abolition and the Economics of Slave-holding in North East Brazil,” Occasional Papers no. 11 (Glasgow: Glasgow Institute of Latin American Studies, n.d.), mimeographed, 11, 16;Google ScholarDenslow, David, “The High Importation-to-Stock Ratio for Slaves in Northeastern Brazil: An Interpretation”(Paper delivered at the Southwestern Social Sciences Conference, San Antonio, Texas,March 1975), 9n.,Google Scholar in which he cites his “Sugar Production in Northeastern Brazil and Cuba” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1974), ch. 2;Google Scholar and de Mello, Pedro Carvalho, “Estimating Slave Longevity in “Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” University of Chicago, Department of Economics, Report no. 7475–21 (Chicago, n.d.);Google Scholaridem, “Economics of Labor,” Report no. 7475–8.

47 The very fact that coffee and cotton offered export potential led these planters into international debt as it led them into using slaves. Engerman, , “Marxist Economic Studies,” 160;Google ScholarBaldwin, Robert E., “Patterns of Development in Newly Settled Regions,” Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies, 24 (05 1956), 161–79;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRussel, Robert R., “The General Effects of Slavery upon Southern Economic Progress,” Journal of Southern History, 4 (02 1938), 3454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Henderson, William Otto, The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861–1865, Economic History Series, no. 9 (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1934).Google Scholar

49 The relationship between income distribution, market size, and industrial growth is admittedly still subject to much dispute; see, for instance, Engerman, Stanley L., “Discussion,” in “Slavery as an Obstacle to Economic Growth in the United States: A Panel Discussion,” Conrad, Alfred H. et al. , eds., Journal of Economic History, 27 (12 1967), 543;Google ScholarBateman, and Weiss, , “Manufacturing in the Antebellum South,” I, 144.Google Scholar

50 Owsley, Frank L., Plain Folk of the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1949), 7, 16, 200201;Google Scholar also see Weaver, Herbert (one of Owsley's many students), Mississippi Farmers, 1850–1860 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1945).Google Scholar

51 Owsley, , Plain Folk, 17; according to data on pp. 174 and 200, 0.88 percent of slaveholders in Lowndes County, Mississippi, and 0.24 percent of those in the Georgia black belt as a whole owned more than 5,000 acres each in 1850.Google Scholar

52 Linden, Fabian, “Economic Democracy in the Slave South: An Appraisal of Some Recent Views,” Journal of Negro History, 31 (1946), 163; he shows (p. 159) that, in the Delta region of Mississippi, estates larger than 2,000 acres held by 8.8 percent of the landholders accounted for 34.2 percent of the land. Linden agrees (p. 187), however, that the two-class stereotype is invalid.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Smith, A. G., Economic Readjustment, 80;Google ScholarCampbell, Randolph B., “Planters and Plain Folk: Harrison County, Texas, as a Test Case, 1850–1860,” Journal of Southern History, 40 (08 1974), 369–98;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWright, , Political Economy, 2442;Google Scholaridem, ‘Economic Democracy’ and the Concentration of Agricultural Wealth in the Cotton South, 1850–1860,” Agricultural History, 44 (01 1970), 6393.Google ScholarSoltow, Lee, Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 136,Google Scholar has concluded that 80 percent of freemen in the South in 1860 owned no slaves; but Olsen, Otto H., “Historians and the Extent of Slave Ownership in the Southern United States,” Civil War History, 18 (06 1972), 111, focusing on white families in the cotton South, shows that this number declines to 52 percent in South Carolina and Mississippi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 de Carvalho Franco, Maria Sylvia, Homens livres na ordem escravocrata (São Paulo: Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros, 1969), 9495;Google ScholarDean, Warren, Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820–1929 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), 19;Google ScholarStein, , Vassouras, 4748;Google ScholarLenharo, Alcir, As Tropas da moderaçãlo (o abastecimento da Corte na formação politico do Brasil, 1808–1842), Coleção Ensaio e Memória, no. 21 (São Paulo: Simbolo, 1979).Google Scholar But Gallman, Robert E., “Self-Sufficiency in the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South,” Agricultural History, 44 (01 1970), 523,Google Scholar shows that in the United States large planters sold foodstuffs to small farmers rather than vice versa; see also Moore, , Agriculture, 179, 182.Google Scholar If for coffee, as for cotton, harvesting took more workers than any other operation on the plantation, then there would have been excess labor available to grow food during the remainder of the year. Woodman, Harold D., “New Perspectives on Southern Economic Development: A Comment,” Agricultural History 49:2 (04 1975), 379;Google ScholarGorender, , Escravismo colonial, 241.Google Scholar

55 Some studies on the history of land tenure in Brazil include da Costa Porto, José, Estudossobre o sistema sesmarial (Recife: Imp. Universitaria, 1965);Google ScholarLima, Rui Cirne, Pequena história territorial do Brasil. Sesmarias e terras devolutas, 2d ed. (Porto Alegre: Livraria Sulina, 1954);Google Scholaridem.Terras Devolutas (Porto Alegre: Globo, 1936);Google ScholarGuimarães, Alberto Passos, Quatro seculos de latifundio (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1968);Google ScholarFreire, Felisbello, História territorial do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. “Jornal do Commercio,” 1906);Google ScholarCouty, Louis, Pequena propriedade e immigração européia (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1887).Google Scholar A comparison between the North American homestead law and the Brazilian land law of 1850 is made by da Costa, Emilia Viotti, Da monarquia à republica: momentos decisivos (São Paulo: Grijalbo, 1977), 127–47.Google Scholar

56 Cannabrava, Alice P., “A repartição da terra na Capitania de São Paulo, 1818,” Estudos Economicos, 2 (12 1972), 113.Google Scholar

57 I computed the index figures by using the method indicated by Charles Dollar, M. and Jensen, Richard J., Historian's Guide to Statistics: Quantitative Analysis and Historical Research (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1971), 122–24.Google Scholar

58 Wright, , Political Economy, 23;Google Scholar he also uses (p. 26) the value of real estate and ends up with a Gini Index number of 0.73. There is much debate on this issue among United States historians: Soltow, , Men and Wealth, 130,Google Scholar calculated a Gini Index among all landowners in the entire United States in 1860 at 0.62 and showed that if all farmers were included—not just landowners—the figure would rise to 0.78. For the South, he presented data only for landowners (p. 133) and—working with value, not acreage—pushed the figure up to Brazilian levels at 0.88. Meanwhile, rural townships in the United States North yielded Gini Index figures hovering around 0.50. Main, Gloria L., “Inequality in Early America: The Evidence from Probate Records of Massachusetts and Maryland,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (Spring 1977), 560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 In Portuguese America, the king had granted huge tracts of land called sesmarias to his favorites; sometimes these grants were measured in many square leagues. See Guimarāes, , Quatro séculos, 3955.Google Scholar Subsequently, these sesmarias were broken up by sale and inheritance to adegree not usually considered by Brazilian historians. Cf. Fernandes, , Revolução burguesa, 1626,Google Scholar with Flory, Rae J. D., “Bahian Society in the Mid-Colonial Period: The Sugar Planters, Tobacco Growers, Merchants, and Artisans of Salvador, 1680–1725” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1978), 24.Google Scholar In colonial times in the United States South, it became a common practice to grant fifty acres for every person a settler brought with him. Although huge tracts were subsequently engrossed by a few individuals, the general southern pattern seems to have been one of much smaller holdings than in Brazil; see Gray, , History of Agriculture, 325, 381403;Google ScholarMcLendon, Samuel G., History of the Public Domain of Georgia (Atlanta: Foote and Davies, 1924);Google ScholarCotterhill, Robert S., “The National Land System in the South,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 16 (03 1930), 495506;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBeeman, Richard R., “Labor Forces and Race Relations: A Comparative View of Colonization of Brazil and Virginia,” Political Science Quarterly, 86 (12 1971), 633. All this is not to deny that in Brazil also there were many more social strata than the very rich and the very poor.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 Soltow, , Men and Wealth, 136,Google Scholar concluded that the Gini Index figure for the distribution of slaves among slaveowners in the South in 1860 was 0.62; but if all freemen were considered thefigure would be 0.93. Furthermore, if slaves were included as potential property holders, the number would rise still further. See Soltow, Lee, “Comment,” in Six Papers on the Size Distribution of Wealth and Income, Soltow, Lee, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press for the National Bureau of Economic Research, 1969), 26.Google Scholar Also see Wright, , Political Economy, 27,Google Scholar where the Gini Index for slaveholding among slaveowners is calculated at 0.79, rising in some places to 0.85. For the placer mining region of Brazil, long after its decline, Gorender (Escravismo colonial, 435) shows a rather even distribution of slaves. Stuart Schwartz suggests this was the trend in all of Brazil. “Patterns of Slaveholding in the Americas: New Evidence from Brazil,” American Historical Review (in press).

61 Dean, Warren, “Latifundia and Land Policy in Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 51 (11 1971), 606–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A group of researchers working under the direction of Professor Ismênia de Lima Martins of the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niteroi has been organizing the land registry records for the state of Rio de Janeiro; in the United States land taxes antedate even independence. Gray, , History of Agriculture, 618.Google Scholar

62 On the failure of this group to provide an adequate market for industrial goods, see Genovese, , “The Significance of the Slave Plantation,” 422–37;Google Scholar but see the qualifying remarks on this matter made by Parker, , “Slavery and Southern Economic Development,” 117.Google Scholar Also see Bruchey, , Roots, 162–72, esp. 171.Google Scholar

63 Cf. Eaton, , Growth of Southern Civilization, 169–70,Google Scholar with Lobato, Monteiro, Urupês, 2d ed. (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1947), 235–36.Google Scholar Historians of Brazil need to differentiate among the caipiras more carefully, as Eaton does, and as Emilio Willems begins to do in Social Differentiation in Colonial Brazil,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 12:1 (01 1970), 3149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 Hall, Michael M., “The Origins of Mass Immigration in Brazil, 1871–1914” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1969);Google ScholarHolloway, Thomas H., “Migration and Mobility: Immigrants as Laborers and Landowners in the Coffee Zone of São Paulo, Brazil, 1886–1934” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1974);Google Scholaridem, “The Coffee Colono of São Paulo: Migration and Mobility, 1880–1930,” Land and Labour in Latin America, Duncan, Kenneth and Rutledge, Ian, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 301–32;Google Scholaridem, Creating the Reserve Army? The Immigration Program of São Paulo, 1886–1930,” International Migration Review, 12 (Summer 1978), 187209;CrossRefGoogle ScholarJúnior, Alfredo Ellis, Populaçōes paulistas, Biblioteca Pedagógica Brasileira, ser. 5, no. 27 (São Paulo: Editora National, 1934), 5779;Google ScholarLeff, , “Tropical Trade,” 688, 690–91;Google Scholar Ana Maria dos Santos, “Immigration and the Ideology of Modernization: The Brazilian Meanings of North American Immigration” (typescript).

65 Cf., e.g., Olmstead, , Cotton Kingdom, 212–21,Google Scholar with Burton, Richard F., Explorations of the Highlands of the Brazil; with a Full Account of the Gold and Diamond Mines; Also, Canoeing down 1500 Miles of the Great River Sao Francisco from Sahará to the Sea, 2 vols. (London: Tinsley, 1869), I, 34115.Google Scholar Also see Woodman, , King Cotton, 189–91;Google ScholarGoldin, , Urban Slavery, 1127;Google ScholarMerrick, Thomas W. and Graham, Douglas H., Population and Economic Development in Brazil, 1800 to the Present (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 186–89.Google Scholar The fact that the Brazilian census did not distinguish town and country derives, of course, not just from the nature of political units, but from the very concept of the urbs, another subject for comparative study; see Morse, Richard W., “Prolegomenon to Latin American Urban History,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 52 (08 1972), 359–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 Nabuco, Joaquim, Abolitionism: The Brazilian Antislavery Struggle, Conrad, Robert, trans, and ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 125.Google Scholar A similar description appears in Olmstead, , Cotton Kingdom, 528–29.Google Scholar

67 Green, Fletcher M., “Democracy in the Old South,” Journal of Southern History, 12 (02 1946), 1415.Google Scholar

68 Genovese, , Political Economy, 2831;Google Scholar the property held by legislators has been studied by Wooster, Ralph A., The People in Power: Courthouse and Statehouse in the Lower South, 1850–1860 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969);Google Scholar but Eugene D. Genovese has retorted that studies of the social origins of politicians reveal “what every fool always knew,” namely, that politicians were usually lawyers, Yeomen Farmers in a Slaveholders' Democracy,” Agricultural History, 49 (04 1975), 339.Google Scholar Also see Dowd, Douglas F., “Discussion,” in “Slavery as an Obstacle,” Conrad, et al. , eds., 537;Google Scholar and Shugg, Roger W., Origins of Class Struggle in Louisiana: A Social History of White Farmers and Laborers during Slavery and After, 1840–1875 (1939; rpt. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), 121–56.Google Scholar

69 On measuring the political power of landowners, see Graham, Richard, “Political Power and Landownership in Nineteenth–Century Latin America,” in New Approaches to Latin American History, Graham, Richard and Smith, Peter H., eds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974), 112–36.Google Scholar Note, however, that Faoro, Raymundo, Os donos do poder; formação do patronato politico brasileiro, 2d ed. (Porto Alegre and São Paulo: Globo and Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 1975),Google Scholar has argued that the Brazilian state was totally independent of the influence of the landowners and was even antagonistic to them. Barman, Roderick J. maintains that even poorwhites had considerable power, “The Brazilian Peasantry Reexamined: The Implications of the Quebra-Quilos Revolt, 1874–1875,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 57 (08 1977), 401–24;CrossRefGoogle Scholar but Linda Lewin presents strong evidence to the contrary in Some Historical Implications of Kinship Organization for Family-based Politics in the Brazilian Northeast,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 21:2 (04 1979), 266–67, 277–78, 289–90,Google Scholar and also in her “The Oligarchical Limitations of Social Banditry in Brazil: The Case of the ‘Good’ Thief Antonio Silvino,” Past and Present, no. 82 (February 1979), 116–46.Google Scholar

70 Johnson, Michael P., Toward a Patriarchal Republic: The Secession of Georgia (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977);Google ScholarEaton, , Growth of Southern Civilization, 173, 175–76;Google ScholarRodrigues, José Honorio, Conciliação e reforma no Brasil, Urn desafio histórico politico, Retratos do Brasil, no. 32 (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1965), 135–62;Google Scholar but see Buescu, Mircea, Brasil, Disparidades de renda no passado: subsidios para o estudo dos problemas brasileiros (Rio de Janeiro: Apec, 1979), 78108.Google Scholar

71 The Brazilian figures are derived from the 1872 census and refer to the percentage of total literates among the total free over six years of age. Brazil, Directoria Geral de Estatistica, Recenseamento … 1872 (Rio de Janeiro: Leuzinger, 18731876);Google Scholar the data on the United States are from Eaton, , Growth of Southern Civilization, 160;Google Scholar also see Engerman, , “Reconsideration,” 353n., who reports the literacy rate among whites in the South at 84 percent.Google Scholar

72 U.S. Census Office, Population of the United States in 1860 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1864); Brazil, Recenseamento1872.Google Scholar

73 Soltow, , Men and Wealth, 176, shows that property holdings in the South tended to increase with age, that 80 percent of those who were sixty years old owned some property, and concludes that young men could reasonably aspire to acquire it.Google Scholar

74 Degler, , Neither Black nor White, 213–64.Google Scholar

75 Cohen, David W. and Greene, Jack P., eds., Neither Slave nor Free: The Freedman of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 8692, 267–68, 318–21;Google ScholarFranklin, John Hope, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790–1860 (1943; rpt. New York: Norton, 1971).Google Scholar

76 The reduced amount of control exercised by Southern elites over the free population may explain why the practice of self-hire among slaves, referred to earlier, posed a threat not felt in Brazil. Similarly, one should note the successful unionization of white workers in Southern cities, long before any similar movement in Brazil. Genovese, , Political Economy, 232–33;Google ScholarEaton, , Growth of Southern Civilization, 165–67;Google ScholarStarobin, , Industrial Slavery, 118–19, 127;Google ScholarFausto, Boris, Trabalho urbano e conflito social (1890–1920), Corpo e Alma do Brasil, no. 46 (São Paulo: Difel, 1977), 4144.Google Scholar

77 Robertson, H. M., Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism: A Criticism of Max Weber and His School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933);Google ScholarJames, Broderick S. J., The Economic Morals of the Jesuits: An Answer to Dr. H. M. Robertson (London: Oxford University Press & Humphrey Milford, 1934);Google ScholarSamuelson, Kurt, Religion and Economic Action, French, E. Geoffrey, trans., Coleman, D. C., ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1961);Google ScholarWax, Rosalie and Wax, Murray, “The Vikings and the Rise of Capitalism,” American Journal of Sociology, 61 (07 1955), 110;CrossRefGoogle ScholarDemant, V. A., Religion and the Decline of Capitalism. The Holland Lectures for 1949 (London: Faber and Faber, 1952).Google Scholar

78 Sombart, Werner, The Quintessence of Capitalism: A Study of the History and Psychology of the Modern Business Man, Epstein, M., trans, and ed. (London: Fisher Unwin, 1915);Google ScholarGerschenkron, Alexander, “Social Attitudes, Entrepreneurship and Economic Development,” International Social Science Bulletin, 6:3 (1954), 252–58;Google ScholarHagen, Everett E., On the Theory of Social Change: How Economic Growth Begins (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey, 1962);Google ScholarMcClelland, David C., The Achieving Society (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961);CrossRefGoogle ScholarAlexander, Alec P., “The Supply of Industrial Entrepreneurship,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2d ser., 4 (Winter 1967), 136–49.Google Scholar

79 Fernandes, Revolução burguesa: Genovese, Political Economy.

80 The two positions on the South are most clearly expressed in Genovese, , Political Economy, 1336,Google Scholar and Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross. Also see Degler, Carl N., “Plantation Society: Old and New Perspectives on Hemispheric History,” Plantation Society in the Americas, 1 (02 1979), 1314.Google Scholar For critiques of Fogel and Engerman's positions on this matter, see David, Paul A. and Temin, Peter, “Capitalist Masters, Bourgeois Slaves,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5 (Winter 1975), 445–57;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, Slavery: The Progressive Institution,” Journal of Economic History, 34 (09 1974), 739–83;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, “Poor Richard at Work in the Cotton Fields: A Critique of the Psychological and Ideological Presuppositions of Time on the Cross,” Review of Radical Political Economics, 1 (Fall 1975), 6783.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I believe the hegemony of the Northern bourgeoisie in this one nation-state may have forced southern planters, in self defense, to articulate a more seigneurial position than their behavior belied. On mortgage law and clarity of land titles, see Sweigart, , “Financing and Marketing,” 109217.Google Scholar On the relationship of culture to economic growth, see Nicholls, William H., Southern Tradition and Regional Progress (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960).Google Scholar

81 The highlights of the debate are noted succintly in Barrow, Thomas C., “The American Revolution as a Colonial War for Independence,” William and Mary Quarterly, 25 (07 1968), 452n.–453n.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82 Rodrigues, José Honorio, Independência: revolução e contra-revolução, 5 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1975);Google ScholarMota, Carlos Guilherme, ed., 1822: Dimensōes (São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1972);Google ScholarFlory, Thomas H., “Judge and Jury in Imperial Brazil: The Social and Political Dimensions of Judicial Reform, 1822–1848” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1975);Google ScholarMorton, F. W. O., “The Conservative Revolution of Independence: Economy, Society, and Politics in Bahia, 1790–1840” (Ph.D. diss., University of Oxford, 1974);Google Scholar and Femandes, , Revolução burguesa, 3185;Google Scholar but cf. Faoro, , Os donos do poder, I, 241312.Google Scholar

83 Fernandes, , Revoluão burguesa, 1530;Google ScholarFlory, R. J. D., “Banian Society,” 96157;Google ScholarNash, Gary B., Class and Society in Early America (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), and especially the readings he suggests.Google Scholar

84 Stone, Lawrence, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642 (New York: Harper and Row, 1972);Google ScholarFrança, Eduardo d'Oliveira, “Portugal na época da Restauração” (doctoral thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, 1951).Google Scholar The debate on the situation in England is reflected in Stone, Lawrence, “Social Mobility in England, 1500–1700,” Past and Present, no. 33 (April 1966), 1655;Google ScholarEveritt, Alan, “Social Mobility in Early Modern England,” Past and Present, no. 33 (April 1966), 5673;Google ScholarSpeck, W. A., “Social Status in Late Stuart England,” Past and Present, no. 34 (July 1966), 127–29;Google Scholar and Stone, Lawrence, “Social Mobility,” Past and Present, no. 35 (December 1966), 156–57.Google Scholar