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

About this book

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.