Colonial Brazil was a multiracial society, profoundly influenced by slavery and the plantation system. 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.

The idea that sugar, plantations, slavery, and capitalism were all present at the birth of the Atlantic world has long dominated scholarly thinking. In nine original essays by a multinational group of top scholars, Tropical Babylons re-evaluates this so-called "sugar revolution." The most comprehensive comparative study to date of early Atlantic sugar economies, this collection presents a revisionist examination of the origins of society and economy in the Atlantic world. Focusing on areas colonized by Spain and Portugal (before the emergence of the Caribbean sugar colonies of England, France, and Holland), these essays show that despite reliance on common knowledge and technology, there were considerable variations in the way sugar was produced. With studies of Iberia, Madeira and the Canary Islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, Brazil, and Barbados, this volume demonstrates the similarities and differences between the plantation colonies, questions the very idea of a sugar revolution, and shows how the specific conditions in each colony influenced the way sugar was produced and the impact of that crop on the formation of "tropical Babylons--multiracial societies of great oppression. Contributors: Alejandro de la Fuente, University of Pittsburgh Herbert Klein, Columbia University John J. McCusker, Trinity University Russell R. Menard, University of Minnesota William D. Phillips Jr., University of Minnesota Genaro Rodriguez Morel, Seville, Spain Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University Eddy Stols, Leuven University, Belgium Alberto Vieira, Centro de Estudos Atlanticos, Madeira

Once preoccupied with Brazilian slavery as an economic system, historians shifted their attention to examine the nature of life and community among enslaved people. Stuart B. Schwartz looks at this change while explaining why historians must continue to place their ethnographic approach in the context of enslavement as an oppressive social and economic system. Schwartz demonstrates the complexity of the system by reconsidering work, resistance, kinship, and relations between enslaved persons and peasants. As he shows, enslaved people played a role in shaping not only their lives but Brazil's institutionalized system of slavery by using their own actions and attitudes to place limits on slaveholders. A bold analysis of changing ideas in the field, Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels provides insights on how the shifting power relationship between enslaved people and slaveholders reshaped the contours of Brazilian society.

This is the first complete modern survey of the institution of slavery in Brazil and how it affected the lives of enslaved Africans. It is based on major new research on the institution of slavery and the role of Africans and their descendants in Brazil. This book aims to introduce the reader to this latest research, both to elucidate the Brazilian experience and to provide a basis for comparisons with all other American slave systems.

This book provides a thoroughly researched and richly illustrated account of a key element of the early modern Atlantic world: the sugar trade linking Brazil, Portugal, and the Netherlands. The study seeks to illuminate the economic, social, political, and cultural dimensions of this commerce. Indeed, trade supported Brazil's rise as the world's leading producer of sugar and the first great plantation colony. Likewise, the sugar trade boosted the economy of Portugal and contributed to the upsurge of the Dutch market. The increasing availability of sugar transformed the European diet (along with some medical theories); and sweets came to play an important part in a variety of social practices. In the political arena, sugar and sugar-producing areas became strategic targets in global conflicts. Furthermore, as this trade expanded, it figured centrally in the evolution of a wide range of financial techniques, business strategies, and institutions of governance--which merchants exploited in order to make their transactions more efficient. The book provides a clear examination of these increasingly sophisticated practices, and shows how they had much in common with today's business operations.

This book brings together key scholars writing on Brazilian slavery and abolition, emphasizing the profound impact it had on the social, political, and institutional history of modern Brazil. For the first time, English-language readers can access in one place arguments that have transformed the historiography of Brazilian slavery.

Interrogates the traditional binary 'slave societies'/'societies with slaves' as a paradigm for understanding the global practice of slaveholding.