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

by Stanley J. Stein

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.

Genres: History, Brazil, School

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1957

About the author

A specialist in the history of Spanish America and Iberia, Stanley Stein was the Walter Samuel Carpenter III Professor of Spanish Civilization and Culture at Princeton University.

Reviews

[Jarrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a book that I was assigned to read back in college and didn't. Somehow I passed the class back then, but I'm just now getting around to reading it. I have to say, I wish I had read it back then. While I enjoyed the read, and how it was full of information, the conclusions in the book are not expounded upon. The obvious conclusion to draw is how it is bad for a country to legislate without a plan. As cruel as slavery is, how cruel is it to emancipate that person and then leave them homeless and to their own vices with no plan for assimilation? The best and obvious solution would have been for the slave trade to have never happened. The land would not have thus been raped, the men and women would not have been subjected to such gross humiliation. Furthermore, the planters and plantation owners would have been forced to see their assets in an entrepreneurial fashion. They would have had to run their business like a business and not unchecked and for their own best interest. With this in mind, they possibly could have been in business to this day. Recommended for anyone interested in Latin culture.