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This is the first complete economic and social history of Brazil in the modern period in any language. It provides a detailed analysis of the evolution of the Brazilian society and economy from the end of the empire in 1889 to the present day. The authors elucidate the basic trends that have defined modern Brazilian society and economy. In this period Brazil moved from being a mostly rural traditional agriculture society with only light industry and low levels of human capital to a modern literate and industrial nation. It has also transformed itself into one of the world's most important agricultural exporters. How and why this occurred is explained in this important survey.
Nineteenth-century Brazil’s constitutional monarchy credibly committed to repay sovereign debt, borrowing repeatedly in international and domestic capital markets without default. Yet it failed to lay the institutional foundations that private financial markets needed to thrive. This study shows why sovereign creditworthiness did not necessarily translate into financial development. “Using a vast array of archival evidence, Summerhill convincingly shows that political commitment to a secure public debt was neither necessary nor sufficient to insure financial development in nineteenth-century Brazil. A must-read for economic and financial historians and for anyone interested in the politics of financial development.” —Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, California Institute of Technology
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A Slave's Place, A Master's World, based on original field research, evaluates the transition from slave to free labour in rural Brazil, highlighting the ways in which slaves, free farmers, freedmen and planters shaped the labour markets of an agrarian economy. Documentation from two areas in the Rio de Janeiro hinterland provides the foundation for comparisons between slavery in Vassouras, a highland town where coffee was produced for the export market, and Rio Bonito, a lowland town where coffee and foodstuffs were marketed regionally. The book examines the settlement processes in both towns, the marginalization of indigenous tribes, the onset of slave labour, and the de facto and de jure claims to land, as planters, small producers and slaves forged the bases of rural society. A feature of the book is the detailed study of the link with the African past during the transition process, when African languages, customs and religion, and social and work-related networks were increasingly juxtaposed with 'master class' practices on the fazendas.