On Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society

Woof, this is a big, difficult book. If there’s any book that can be called “nearly comprehensive,” it’s this one, at least in terms of its subject. Schwartz here looks at plantation society in northeast Brazil, specifically in Bahia, through a quasi-Marxist lens (although he doesn’t seem to be a Marxist). As a result, he sees interactions and conflicts between the different social groups of Bahia as the engine of the region’s history.

A rough outline of the history looks a little bit like this: In the first century of Portuguese control of Bahia (starting from 1500), the structure of Bahian society was thoroughly dynamic, with constant shifts in power. Moreover, the nature of Brazilian society shifted as Portuguese plantation owners stopped relying on indigenous slaves and shifted to African slaves, who were seen as being 3x as efficient. The 17th century was the high point of the Bahian sugar industry, but the institution of slavery slowly calcified and plantation owners faced difficulties due to the decline of the industry but the continuing importance of slavery. Very little was purchased with cash, nearly everything with credit, which raised the stakes of sugar cultivation—failure became an untenable option. The low point of the sugar industry was the early 18th century, although sugar exports began to surge in the late 18th century. By this point, Bahian society became quasi-static, organized largely around slavery. In the early-mid nineteenth century, Bahia faced slave revolt after slave revolt, frequently tinged by Islamic language and mentalities. Schwartz frames this being a de facto war against the institution of slavery, but the enslaved peoples lost and were thoroughly repressed. Because the text ends in 1835, it’s unclear what happened after—did slave revolts continue? The slaveholders become more brutal? Did something happen in the 50 years between the end of this book and the abolition of slavery in Brazil?

Schwartz seems to be pushing against earlier arguments, which claimed that Brazilian society can effectively be understood as fundamentally emerging out of the sugar plantation system. Both state and society were shaped by sugar, including multiracial stratification. However, because Schwartz exclusively talks about Bahia, it is unclear how other regions fit into the narrative and what are actually defining aspects of Brazilian society. Moreover, what makes Brazil different from other sugar societies in the Caribbean? How does Brazil differ from Cuba? What about Barbados? Jamaica? I have a lot of questions that the book doesn’t quite answer. The material contained within this text is good for future comparativists, but I was disappointed that Schwartz doesn’t even take the time to look over at other Brazilian regions or examine Bahia in a larger context—those choices would have helped considerably.

This is a great text for those who are really, really interested in studying slavery throughout the Americas, but it didn’t quite accomplish what I had hoped it would.