Francisco Vidal Luna; Herbert S Klein sku-24756588 Book

Francisco Vidal Luna; Herbert S Klein, sku-24756588: Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo, 1750-1850. This paperback is listed under Latin American History Books in the Social Science History series. It examines São Paulo's economy and people during the transition from the eighteenth-century colonial period to the nineteenth century.

The authors argue that slavery was as deeply entrenched and exploited there as elsewhere in Brazil, and that an expanding African slave labor force enabled early economic growth and the region's rise as a leading coffee producer after 1850. They also study free whites and people of color who did not own slaves and compare São Paulo with other slave societies in the Americas.

The account challenges claims of São Paulo's exceptionalism and economic histories shaped by path dependence. The description notes that much earlier scholarship focused on coffee after 1850 or on European immigration after 1880, when the city grew into one of the world's largest metropolises; it describes the book as the first comprehensive portrait of the earlier transition.

It also describes present-day São Paulo as a highly advanced agricultural, industrial and urbanized region whose historical development is poorly understood.