Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900: The Roles of Planter and Slave in a Plantation Society

Published
Stanley Stein
ISBN
978-0691022369
Publisher
Princeton University Press

This book is a now classic social and economic study of the origins, apogee, and decline of coffee in the Parahyba Valley of South Central Brazil. Local society, the free-planters, professionals, tradesmen, and lower class citizens-and the slaves, are viewed through the routine of plantation life. The author shows how abolition, erosion, and bankruptcy transformed virgin forest into a wasteland of eroded hillsides and abandoned towns, of disillusioned planters and poverty-stricken black freedmen.

Area of Interest
Economic History
Social History
Period
19th Century
20th Century
Region
Latin America and the Caribbean