Week 5: The “Regresso”
Seminar Questions
- What brought renewed stability, and by when?
- Who were the winners and losers?
- What were the political and social effects of the upswing in coffee production?
- How land ownership change during the coffee boom and how significant was land policy?
- What were the political effects of the maintenance of slavery? What was slave society in the coffee plantation areas like?
- How democratic was the Brazilian Empire? What were elections like in practice?
Seminar Readings
•Viotti da Costa, chapter 4 and chapter 5;
Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee Country, 1850-1900 (1957). Ch 3, “Plantation Labour,” pp 55-80 e-book at library
•Richard Graham, Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil, Chapter 3, “Elections and Patronage,” pp 71-98; and chapter 4, “The Theatre of Elections,” 101-121 [several copies in library; chapter 4 is on library scans page]
•José Murilo de Carvalho, “Political Elites and Statebuilding: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Brazil,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42:3 (July 1982): 378-399