Peasantry and slavery in Brazil: A contribution to the history of the free poor planters from the General Captaincy of Pernambuco, 1700-1817. (Volumes I and II)
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| Publicado en: | ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (1993) |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
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| Acceso en línea: | Citation/Abstract Full Text - PDF |
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| Resumen: | This study tries to recuperate the main lines of development of a free peasantry in the framework of a colonial formation--Brazil's Oriental Northeast from 1700 to 1817, believed to have been, since its foundation, regulated by slavery. The geographical scope refers to those areas directly or indirectly under the influence of world market pulses: broadly speaking the sugar-cane areas of the Captaincy General of Pernambuco and the agreste zones of the interior, where "peasants" were first detected by late 17th century sources. The thesis maintains that a colonial peasantry appeared and first expanded in the region between, roughly, 1710 and 1760, activated by a particular form of commercial capital, and centered on the cultivation of foodstuffs and tobacco, for "export markets". Peasant's growth and expansion directly depended upon world market fluxes, since both occurred in a conjuncture of Pernambucan sugar collapse in foreign markets and soaring slave prices as a result of central Brazil mining districts' voracious demand for labor. The study argues that manioc and tobacco, combined with plantations withdrawal from fertile coastal areas, were the basis of peasant growth up to the 1750's, when pombalian reforms attempted to regain control of colonial production and trade, reestablishing long-course monopoly and repressing peasant commercial schemes. Expansion stopped, but the productive base had been prepared for future opportunities, soon to appear. Starting in the 1770's, Pernambucan peasants began to be articulated by British demand for cotton, as an alternative to slave labor. Peasant cotton's growth soon provoked foodstuff shortages and social unrest as peasants refused to fulfill State-ascribed functions, particularly military draft. Contradictions evolved into a full expropriation offensive launched by the State, based on three instruments: prohibition of non-slave cotton cultures, heavy peasant recruitment, and Crown's confiscation of forest lands, said to be broadly populated by peasants. From 1799 on peasant coastal regions emptied, as thousands of families moved back to the interior, or began other differentiation paths. Plantation owners's seizure of power in 1817, marked the end of peasant autonomy in the Oriental Northeast and the enthronement of slave plantation, at last, as the hegemonic form of production. |
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| ISBN: | 9781392895368 |
| Fuente: | ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global |