Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T06:39:46.502Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reconsidering Textile Production in Late Colonial Brazil: New Evidence From Minas Gerais

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Douglas C. Libby
Douglas C. Libby*
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Scholars have long recognized that the final quarter of the eighteenth century in Brazil witnessed an agricultural renaissance in which traditional exports expanded and new tropical products began to find their way overseas (Prado Júnior 1967; Novais 1979; Arruda 1980, 1986; Alden 1984). In recent years, more attention has been paid to the diversified productive activities supplying an increasingly consolidated domestic market during this period (Brown 1986; Barickman 1991; Fragoso 1992). Although most of those activities were agricultural, artisan trades also flourished and domestic industry appears to have been growing, particularly the cottage textile industry. My examination of an unexplored and unusual primary source has revealed grounds for assuming that cloth and thread were being made throughout much of late colonial Brazil. The primary evidence also suggests that this cottage industry resembled the incipient stages of so-called European proto-industrialization to a remarkable degree, although important differences cannot be ignored. Nor does the regionalized nature of the source allow for generalizing about the colony as a whole. This research is thus a preliminary investigation that calls for further research. It nevertheless points out the potential importance of domestic industry within the overall Brazilian colonial economy and stimulates awareness of its complexities.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , 1997 , pp. 88 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the University of Texas Press

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alden, Dauril 1984 “Late Colonial Brazil, 1750–1808.” In The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell, 2:601–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Arruda, Jose Jobson De Andrade 1980 O Brasil no comércio colonial. São Paulo: Atica.Google Scholar
Arruda, Jose Jobson De Andrade 1986 “A produção econômica.” In O Império Luso-Brasileiro, 1750–1822, coordinated by Silva, Maria Beatriz Nizza Da, 85–153. Lisbon: Estampa.Google Scholar
Barickman, B. J. 1991 “The Slave Economy of Nineteenth-Century Bahia: Export Agriculture and Local Market in the Recôncavo, 1780–1860.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.Google Scholar
Bergad, Laird W. 1994 “Depois do boom: Aspectos demográficos e econômicos da escravidão em Mariana, 1750–1808.” Estudos Econômicos 24, no. 3:495–525.Google Scholar
Branner, John C. 1885 Cotton in the Empire of Brazil: The Antiquity, Methods, and Extent of Its Cultivation, Together with Statistics of Exportation and Home Consumption. Miscellaneous Special Report no. 8. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture.Google Scholar
Brown, Larissa V. 1986 “Internal Commerce in a Colonial Economy: Rio de Janeiro and Its Hinterland, 1790–1822.” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Carvalho, Daniel De 1916 Notícias históricas sobre o algodão em Minas. Rio de Janeiro: Typographia do Jornal do Comércio.Google Scholar
Dias, Manuel Nunes 1971 A companhia geral do Grão-Pará e Maranhão (1755–1778). 2 vols. Pará: Imprensa Oficial.Google Scholar
Fragoso, Joåo Luis Ribeiro 1992 Homens de grossa aventura: Acumulação e hierarquia na praça mercantil do Rio de Janeiro (1790–1830). Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional.Google Scholar
Gullickson, Gay L. 1991 “Love and Power in the Proto-Industrial Family.” In Markets and Manufacture in Early Industrial Europe, edited by Berg, Maxime, 205–26. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Holanda, Sergio Buarque De 1957 Caminhos e fronteiras. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio.Google Scholar
Koster, Henry 1966 Travels in Brazil. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Kriedte, Peter 1981 “The Origins, the Agrarian Context, and the Conditions in the World Market.” In Kriedte, Medick, and Schlumbohm 1981, 12–37.Google Scholar
Kriedte, Peter, Medick, Hans, and Schlumbohm, JÜRgen 1981 Industrialization before Industrialization. Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.Google Scholar
Libby, Douglas C. 1988 Transformação e trabalho em uma economia escravista: Minas Gerais no século XIX. São Paulo: Brasiliense.Google Scholar
Libby, Douglas C. 1991 “Proto-Industrialization in a Slave Society: The Case of Minas Gerais.” Journal of Latin American Studies 23, pt. 1:1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Libby, Douglas C. 1993 “Sociedade e cultura escravistas como obstáculos ao desenvolvimento: Notas sobre o Brasil oitocentista.” Estudos Econômicos 23, no. 3:445–76.Google Scholar
Lima, Heitor Ferreira 1961 Formação industrial do Brasil: Período colonial. Rio de Janeiro: Fundo de Cultura.Google Scholar
Luccock, John 1820 Notes on Rio de Janeiro and the Southern Parts of Brazil: Taken during a Residence of Ten Years in That Country from 1808 to 1818. London: Samuel Leigh.Google Scholar
Maxwell, Kenneth 1973 Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal, 1750–1808. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Medick, Hans 1981 “Households and Family in Agrarian Societies and in the Proto-Industrial System: An Approach to the Problem.” In KRIEDTE, MEDICK, AND SCHLUMBOHM 1981, 38–73.Google Scholar
Metcalf, Alida C. 1992 Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil: Santana de Parnaíba, 1580–1822. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Novais, Fernando A. 1979 Portugal e o Brasil na crise do antigo sistema colonial (1777–1808). São Paulo: Hucitec.Google Scholar
Prado Junior, Caio 1967 Formação do Brasil contemporâneo (colônia). São Paulo: Brasiliense.Google Scholar
Saint-Hilaire, Auguste De 1975 Viagem a Província de Goiás. São Paulo and Belo Horizonte: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo and Itatiaia.Google Scholar
Saint-Hilaire, Auguste De 1976 Viagem a Província de São Paulo. São Paulo and Belo Horizonte: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo and Itatiaia.Google Scholar
Schlumbohm, JÜRgen 1983 “Seasonal Fluctuations and Social Division of Labour: Rural Linen Production in the Osnabrük and Bielefeld Regions and the Urban Woolen Industry in the Niederlausitz.” In Manufacture in Town and Country before the Factory, edited by Maxime Berg, Pat Hudson, and Sonenscher, Michael, 92–123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spix, Johann Baptist Von, and Martius, Carl Friedrich Philipp Von 1976 Viagem pelo Brasil. 2 vols. São Paulo: Edições Melhoramentos.Google Scholar
Vardi, Liana 1993 The Land and the Loom: Peasants and Profit in Northern France, 1680–1800. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar