The Growth and Decline of Indigo Production in Colonial Brazil: A Study in Comparative Economic History

1965 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dauril Alden
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Global History ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
Limited Experience ◽  
Modern Chemical ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Brazil ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Indigo Production

Not long ago an authority on dyeing observed that “in the history of the dyeing industry indigo holds a unique place by reason of its irresistible rise to supremacy among dyestuffs and its equally rapid dethronement by the modern chemical colors. …” Among the sources of this once flourishing industry, one that has never been studied adequately is that of colonial Brazil. Commercial indigo production began there in the early 1760's, but after an impressive start the industry disappeared within less than two generations. Its beginnings occurred at a time when Portugal, like other imperial powers of that era, was seeking to diversify the agriculture of her colonies so as to make them more lucrative to the mother country. A study of the industry's brief tenure in Portugal's most important colony reveals some of the problems that confronted its planters, merchants, and royal officials as they attempted, with limited experience and inadequate supporting capital, to develop new sources of income during a period of keen international economic rivalry. The factors involved in the rise and decline of the Brazilian indigo industry can best be appreciated when it is examined as part of the global history of indigo production and trade between the late fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

scholarly journals Federal Aspects of Preferential Trade in the British Empire

1918 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. D. Allin
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Commercial Policy ◽  
New Era ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

The battle over the Corn Laws was fought out in Great Britain as a domestic issue. But it had nevertheless a great imperial significance. During the mercantilistic régime the colonies had been regarded as a commercial appanage of the mother country. The victory of the free traders opened up a new era in the economic history of the empire. The colonies were released from the irksome restrictions of the Navigation Laws. They acquired the right to frame their own tariffs with a view to their own particular interests. In short, they ceased to be dependent communities and became self-governing states.But the emancipation of the colonies was by no means complete. The home government still claimed the right to control their tariff policies. The colonies were privileged, indeed, to arrange their tariff schedules according to local needs; but it was expected that their tariff systems would conform to the fiscal policy of the mother land. The free traders, no less than the mercantilists, were determined to maintain the fiscal unity of the empire. There was still an imperial commercial policy; its motif only had been changed from protection to free trade. The colonies were still bound to the fiscal apron strings of the mother country; but the strings were no longer so short, nor the knots so tight as they had formerly been.

Writing the History of Slavery: Between Comparatism and Global History

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-40
Author(s):  
Paulin Ismard
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Global Approach ◽  
Global History ◽  
Ancient Athens ◽  
Observation Methods ◽  
History Of ◽  
Slavery Studies

Should we consider, along with the great specialist Patrick Manning, that “the field of slavery studies has become a model of comparatism in social and economic history”? This depends on what we mean by the term “comparatism,” which has come to denote approaches as different in their methods as they are varied, and even contradictory, in their goals. Since the end of the 1990s, the global history of slavery has highlighted the epistemological naivety of a certain comparatist tradition that understands slavery from the perspective of its institutions, and not as a dynamic process resulting from specific historical conditions. It is nevertheless important to identity the limits of such a “global” approach when it claims to be the only method capable of defining slavery throughout history. After reviewing the theoretical challenges that traverse the contemporary historiography of slavery, this article seeks to show what a “morphological” comparatist approach, using redefined scales of observation, methods, and goals, can contribute to the study of one particular society: Athens during the Classical period. By looking at a specific organization of servile labor common to numerous slave societies, in which a slave tied to the running of a piece of land, a workshop, or a commercial store made regular payments to his master, it is possible to reinterrogate some fundamental aspects of the institution of slavery in ancient Athens.

The Wood-Beach at Recife: A Contribution to the Economic History of Brazil

1949 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 209-233
Author(s):  
Robert C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Portuguese Empire ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Red Dye

The cutting and shipment of wood is one of the oldest and most important aspects of Brazilian trade with Portugal. The rich red dye produced from the tree called pau brasil or Brazil wood was esteemed so highly that at first it outweighed in importance all other products of the colony. Most historians agree that the very name of Brazil is derived from this wood. Guarded as a royal monopoly throughout the colonial period, the wood trade ranked with the sugar, tobacco and gold of Brazil as one of the principal sources of revenue of the Portuguese crown. When woods for building were added to the exportation of pau brasil, the trade assumed a new importance, for these woods furnished the mother country with the sinews both of war and commerce, providing the hulls and masts of countless vessels that defended and brought together the distant domains of the Portuguese empire.

The Wood-Beach at Recife: A Contribution to the Economic History of Brazil

1949 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-233
Author(s):  
Robert C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Portuguese Empire ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Red Dye

The cutting and shipment of wood is one of the oldest and most important aspects of Brazilian trade with Portugal. The rich red dye produced from the tree called pau brasil or Brazil wood was esteemed so highly that at first it outweighed in importance all other products of the colony. Most historians agree that the very name of Brazil is derived from this wood. Guarded as a royal monopoly throughout the colonial period, the wood trade ranked with the sugar, tobacco and gold of Brazil as one of the principal sources of revenue of the Portuguese crown. When woods for building were added to the exportation of pau brasil, the trade assumed a new importance, for these woods furnished the mother country with the sinews both of war and commerce, providing the hulls and masts of countless vessels that defended and brought together the distant domains of the Portuguese empire.

Institutions for writing the economic history of the global

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Luiten Van Zanden
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
National Income ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Global History ◽  
Real Wages ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
New Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research

Global history needs to take advantage of new research methodologies of teamwork and collaboration. Historians and economic historians can work together to provide historical data sets covering the world. New evidence gathering and analysis through teams of historians pooling expertise can create new public goods for global history. Examples are provided by current collaborative projects on national income, prices, real wages, and labour relations. Historians working in such teams must make agreements over who owns the data, the division of labour and who leads the projects and publications.

scholarly journals Reciprocal Comparison and African History: Tackling Conceptual Eurocentrism in the Study of Africa's Economic Past

2007 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Third World ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
African History ◽  
Global History ◽  
Main Requirement ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Concepts ◽  
Western Experience

Abstract:This article argues for constructive responses to the dominance, in the analysis of African economic history, of concepts derived from Western experience. It reviews the existing responses of this kind, highlighting the fact that some of the most influential ideas applied to African economies, past and present, have been coined in the context not of Europe or North America but rather of other relatively poor regions formerly under European colonial rule. These “Third World” contributions have been enriching for African studies, though they have been duly criticized in African contexts, in accordance with the usual scholarly pattern. It is argued here that the main requirement for overcoming conceptual Eurocentrism in African history, in the interests of a more genuinely “general” social science and “global” history, is reciprocal comparison of Africa and other continents—or, more precisely, of specific areas within Africa with counterparts elsewhere. Pioneering examples of such comparisons are reviewed and, to illustrate the possibilities, a set of propositions is put forward from African history that may be useful for specialists on other parts of the world. The article concludes with suggestions for ways in which Africanists can best pursue the project of reciprocal comparison, and with a plea for us to be more intellectually ambitious.

The Role of the Wangara in the Economic Transformation of the Central Sudan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Textile Production ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
Major Turning Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Combined Impact

The term ‘Wangara’ has most commonly been used to describe the gold merchants of ancient Mali and Ghana and has been equated with ‘Juula’ (Dyula). This article establishes another meaning for ‘Wangara’, as it has been used in the Central Sudan, particularly Hausaland. There the Wangara were descendants of merchants who were once connected with the Songhay Empire of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Since the term is also used in Borgu to describe resident Muslim merchants in the Bariba states, it is postulated that the Wangara were once a Songhay-based commercial group which established diaspora communities in the Bariba and Hausa towns before the Songhay collapse of 1591. It is argued that these Wangara merchants were instrumental in the economic development of the Central Sudan in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They were not only associated with commerce but were involved in early leather and textile production and probably were responsible for the introduction of such new products as kola nuts and the spread of the Songhay monetary system, based on cowries and gold. The immigration of the Wangara came at a time when other economic changes were taking place in the Hausa cities and Borno. The combined impact of these developments were such as to mark the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a major turning point in the economic history of the Central Sudan.

Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment, by Joachim Radkau

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-422
Author(s):  
Anne E. C. McCants
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Global History ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Axis ◽  
The Impact

As is perhaps suggested by its very title, Nature and Power, Joachim Radkau's important contribution to “a global history of the environment” takes as its primary axis of analysis the impact of the exercise of political authority by states on the natural world as constituted by plants, animals, soil, water, and air. The economy makes very few appearances as such. Indeed, the only index reference to things economic is a lone entry for Max Weber's Economy and Society (1922), and even there the economy is not the point of the citation. Yet economic history and environmental history share a great many common concerns, not least of which is what we might broadly call “human welfare.” My comments will explore the possible connections between Radkau's reading of our global environmental past and the broad narratives developed by economic historians to tell their version of global history.

scholarly journals Global history in the age of crisis: metanarratives of material progress and the rise of Asia

HISTOREIN ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Sakis Gekas
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
Global History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Material Progress

Metanarratives of material progress have been around at least since the time of Smith, Marx and Weber. This article reviews some works in global (economic) history and the history of financial crises and discusses the relationship between the rise of global history and the rise of Asia.

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