1985
First Published
4.26
Average Rating
626
Number of Pages
Part of Series
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.
Avg Rating
4.26
Number of Ratings
27
5 STARS
52%
4 STARS
26%
3 STARS
19%
2 STARS
4%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Stuart B. Schwartz
Author · 10 books
Stuart B. Schwartz is Professor of History at Yale University and the former Master of Ezra Stiles College. He studied at Middlebury College, where he received his undergraduate degree, and the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico. He then went on to study Latin American History at Columbia University where he received his Ph.D. (1968). He is one of the leading specialists on the History of colonial Latin America, especially Brazil and on the history of Early Modern expansion.
