The economic geography of race in the New World
Brazil, 1500-2000
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3214724 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Justin R Bucciferro (Eastern Washington University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1103-1130 |
| Publication date | 2017-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ehr.12483 |
| OpenAlex | W2610105086 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 55 |
Race is a fundamental aspect of historical inequality and institutions, yet it is at times overlooked within the literature on comparative development in the Americas. This article investigates the nature of staple production in Brazil and attendant changes in the racial composition of 20 modern states from its discovery by the Portuguese to the present. The Indigenous population was surpassed by that of African descent in the north-east, south-east, and north, respectively, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; not until decades after the abolition of slavery did people of European heritage come to constitute a majority. These transitions were guided by the relative productivity, natural increase, and price of Native and African slaves, contingent on the extent of natural resource wealth (mineral deposits or land suitable for growing cash crops) and supply of free labour. In those areas where slavery was most profitable, a 1 per cent increase in the relative cost of Native labour raised the proportion of people of African ancestry by up to 2 per cent, depending on the measures of slave prices and racial classifications considered. This relationship is robust to changes in output prices or the populace of European descent, and alternative scenarios of aboriginal population decline
African descent · Agriculture · Archaeology · Cash crop · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Inequality · Natural resource · Political science · Population · Productivity · Race (biology) · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Demography · Ecology · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History
Red gold
The population of colonial Brazil
Portuguese settlement, 1500–1580
Late colonial Brazil, 1750–1808
The gold cycle, c . 1690–1750
Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil 1850–1914
Ethnic diversity, social sanctions, and public goods in Kenya
A Staple Theory of Economic Growth
Factor Endowments, Institutions, and Differential Paths of Growth Among New World Economies
Ethnic Diversity and Economic Performance
The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development
Africa's Growth Tragedy
Reversal of Fortune
Handbook of South American Indians
Disease and demography in the Americas
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
Indians and the frontier
The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade
The Atlantic Slave Trade
Slavery and the Demographic and Economic History of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1720–1888
Institutions and Economic Performance
Indigenous Peoples in Latin America
Inequality does cause underdevelopment
Indian Labor and New World Plantations
Indian Labor and New World Plantations
Colonial Origins of Inequality in Hispanic America? Some Reflections Based on New Empirical Evidence
Five centuries of Latin American income inequality
Between the colonial heritage and the first globalization boom
Law and Finance
Smallpox and Native American mortality
The Golden Age of Brazil 1695-1750
The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery 1850 - 1888
Chapters of Brazil's Colonial History (1500-1800)
Tropics, germs, and crops
Distributive Politics and Economic Growth
Rewriting the Late Pre-European History of Amazonia
Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions
Accounting for the Traffic in Africans
Persistent Inequality? Trade, Factor Endowments, and Inequality in Republican Latin America
Essays on the Price History of Eighteenth Century Latin America
The colonial roots of land inequality
History Lessons
The long march of history
Inequality, Institutions and Economic Growth in Latin America
Slave prices, the African slave trade, and productivity in the Caribbean, 1674-18071
Vassouras. A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |