Sugar plantations in the formation of a Brazilian society: Bahia, 1550-1835.

Abstract

Examines the history of the sugar economy and the peculiar development of plantation society over a 300 year period in Bahia, a major sugar plantation zone and an important terminus of the Atlantic slave trade. Draws on archival sources, plantations accounts, and notarial records. 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 as keys to an understanding of roles and relationships in plantation society. A comparative perspective is also employed; studies of slavery elsewhere in the Americas inform the analysis, and direct comparisons of the Bahian case with other plantation societies are made.-from Publisher