The book illustrates how the exploitation of enslaved persons\u2014an element of the economic rationality that was taking over the world\u2014changed over time. According to Marquese, until the seventeenth century, the concept of slave labor followed the same logic as the ancient treatises on agronomy and economy, which focused on managing the house first, and production second. \u201cIn the eighteenth century, with the establishment of the political economy, economic discourse became autonomous,\u201d he says. The market expanded at a rapid pace, and productivity became key. In response, land, labor, and money became factors of production.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter this takes place, we are able to document how the thinking and practices of slave owners changed with regards to the labor of the enslaved, seen as a source of value creation. The management of this labor also changed: mechanisms were created to extract more labor from people and more product from nature,\u201d Marquese points out. To describe the change in the logic of production regarding enslaved people, Tomich coined the expression \u201csecond slavery,\u201d embraced by Marquese and other Brazilian scholars.<\/p>\n
Concentration and intensification<\/strong> An observable effect of the new role of the Paraiba Valley in the international market was the concentrated ownership of enslaved individuals. The process was studied in the local archives by a researcher from Marquese’s team, PhD student Breno Servidone Moreno, who compared the demographic pattern of the former French colony of Santo Domingo (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), at the peak of its coffee production during the second half of the eighteenth century, to what was practiced in this region of Brazil during the mid-nineteenth century. On the Caribbean island, 26% of slave owners owned 61% of enslaved people. In Bananal, in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2014the area analyzed by Moreno, 21% of owners had 80% of the enslaved population.<\/p>\n The size of the properties was also different. In Santo Domingo, the average size was 145 hectares. In Bananal, it was more than twice as large: 397 hectares. The Bananal numbers are similar to the known data for Vassouras and Cantagalo, in Rio de Janeiro, and are considered representative for the Para\u00edba Valley. In Santo Domingo, each enslaved individual would produce, on average, about 220 kilograms (kg) of coffee a year. In Bananal, in 1854, each person produced 1,270 kg of coffee per year.<\/p>\n National Library of Brazil \/ Rio de Janeiro<\/span><\/a> Detail of a map of the Rio de Janeiro province, drawn up in 1861 by engineers Pedro d’Alcantra Bellegarde and Conrado Jacob de Niemeyer. It portrays the area dedicated to coffee growing on an unprecedented scale, in the central Para\u00edba ValleyNational Library of Brazil \/ Rio de Janeiro<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n The restrictions on the slave trade and the demands of the market also had an impact on science and medicine, says historian Iamara da Silva Viana, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ) and the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ). Medical knowledge specific to the bodies of enslaved persons was developed, clearly expressed in the Manual\u00a0do fazendeiro ou tratado dom\u00e9stico sobre as enfermidades dos negros <\/em>(Farmer\u2019s manual or domestic treatise on the illnesses of Black people), published by Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Alban Imbert in the 1830s, which Viana has studied in detail.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was about caring for enslaved bodies to maximize their use, at a time of economic expansion and massive influx of Africans. The body of the enslaved was scrutinized to meet economic and political demands. Imbert describes the enslaved body as value, investment, and labor force,\u201d Viana summarizes.<\/p>\n Around this time, Brazil supplied half of the world\u2019s coffee production. The Para\u00edba Valley, which had up until then been occupied by small family farms, began to house large-scale coffee farms that were heavily dependent on the labor of the enslaved.<\/p>\n \u201cOn one hand, what motivated us to write this book was the plantation landscapes transforming into labor sites. But we also wanted to examine the images, maps, photographs, oil paintings, etc. as elements that not only represented realities, but also interfered with how the material space was organized, introducing modifications,\u201d summarizes Marquese. He explains that the modern concept of landscape is a product of the Renaissance, as is the notion of perspective.<\/p>\n Marquese claims iconographic analysis is relevant because landscapes emerged as a way not only to view the physical world, but also to control it, through their codified display from a single, dominating point of view. This is when the world begins to be seen through the lens of mathematics, with \u201can impulse to impose order on one\u2019s surroundings and resources,\u201d he states. At the same time, \u201cit is a way to represent environments with an organization that is both symbolic and material: by interpreting the world in this way, the opposite also becomes true, because the representation also organizes the physical space,\u201d he says. This is why representation was a fundamental element of colonialism, which produced \u201clayers and layers of maps of urban and rural spaces, rationalizing the territory of the colonies.\u201d<\/p>\n The availability of the images varies from country to country and is indicative of political and historical circumstances. A detail that caught the researchers\u2019 attention was the scarcity of maps and topographical representations of Brazilian farms, compared to how many such documents exist for Cuba and the Mississippi region. There is an \u201cenormous wealth of images\u201d on the Caribbean island because strict control over the topographical limits of each property was essential to maintain the power of the Spanish Crown, since the Caribbean island was one of its last colonial possessions and the wealthiest. In the United States, the main motivation was advancing the frontier, which was accomplished by privatizing land through public sales, which required prior mapping.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no maps of the Para\u00edba Valley farms from around this time. We searched desperately, everywhere; all we found was a map of the land in the nineteenth century, which doesn\u2019t even show the boundaries of the properties,\u201d says Marquese. The historian claims the reason for this scarcity in Brazil lies in the concentration of political power in the hands of coffee barons and slave owners. \u201cThe farmers were not interested in mapping or counting their properties. They preferred to resolve whatever conflicts arose amongst themselves. The lack of maps is a deliberate choice. The country leaned heavily on the illegal slave trade,\u201d he observes.<\/p>\n Most of the farm images in the book are photographs by Marc Ferrez (1843\u20131923), taken in the 1880s, the last decade of slavery (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issue<\/em> n\u00ba\u00a0281<\/em><\/a>). Although they are from a different time, when the coffee-growing frontier had moved to the west of S\u00e3o Paulo, the images of the farms in the Para\u00edba Valley, depicting enslaved individuals, tried to represent an accelerated transformation. \u201cThe photos were taken in the context of the final throes of slavery. The farm owners knew their world was at a crossroads. These are records by those trying to turn the past and the present into a monument,\u201d declares Marquese. The same can be said for the farm landscapes painted by the Rio-based German painter Johann Georg Grimm, from that same time, in which enslaved individuals can barely be seen.<\/p>\n Marc Ferrez \/ Afro Brazil Museum<\/span><\/a> Families of laborers carrying baskets and hoes under the supervision of the farm foreman\u2014in the 1885 depiction, the latter is the only one wearing a jacket and shoesMarc Ferrez \/ Afro Brazil Museum<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Territorial boundaries are not the only case where there was deliberate lack of data and representations. According to historian Thiago Campos Pessoa, from the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), at the root of this silence is the illegal trading of enslaved Africans, whose role in the formation of independent Brazil is often neglected. Of the 4.8 million enslaved people brought to Brazil over three centuries, about 2 million were brought during the nineteenth century alone, points out Pessoa. During the almost two decades when the slave trade was illegal, but not monitored\u2014from 1831 to 1850\u2014the country received around 800,000 enslaved individuals, says the historian.<\/p>\n These numbers express how slavery was a central institution for Brazil during its inception as a nation state, states Pessoa. Coffee was projected as the main product that sustained the national economy. It was one of the few sources of taxes for the government, so farm owners accumulated great political power and were the key stakeholders when it came to importing captive labor. \u201cBut it was an illegal practice, not only according to the international treaties signed by the country, but also to Brazilian law itself,\u201d notes the historian.<\/p>\n \u201cSuch a large volume of slave trading requires a complex political arrangement. And the condition for such an arrangement was keeping a certain amount of silence, an unspoken agreement,\u201d explains Pessoa. \u201cEvery time the subject of the slave trade was brought up for discussion, it was done in a controlled way. In 1848, Parliament discussed repealing the 1831 law that prohibited the trading of enslaved people, but the session was held in secret. The minutes were never published by the press,\u201d he notes. The Empire\u2019s ruling power coalition had its feet firmly planted on slavery, and Pessoa believes that, while high society recognized they were acting outside the law, they also joined forces to silence this and ensure the law would not be enforced.<\/p>\n Pessoa studied the landing of Africans in clandestine ports on the northern coast of S\u00e3o Paulo, through which an estimated 10% of the enslaved people were brought during the time when the slave trade was illegal. When a law was passed on November 7, 1831, preventing the entry of new enslaved people into Brazil, these ports\u2014also called \u201creception farms\u201d\u2014began to spread across the country, replacing the large points of entry that were active before then, such as the Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro, which was excavated in 2011 and is now a memorial (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issues<\/em> n\u00ba<\/em> 190<\/a> and n\u00ba 300<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n The lack of records of these clandestine landings seems peculiar: there is no way a port that handles ships containing human beings as cargo could be inconspicuous in the eyes of the government. They required lighthouses and shacks for the mandatory quarantine after weeks at sea. They also required boatmen to berth the ships and help with the landing, people to feed the crew, middlemen to help distribute the captives among buyers, and several other associated services.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know very little about these ports. We barely know anything about where the slave trade took place. There are reports, usually made by Englishmen, of landings in Rio de Janeiro, Niter\u00f3i, Santos, and other points. On a beach on the north coast of Rio, a graveyard was found for enslaved individuals. These records have been explored by historians for about a decade,\u201d reports Pessoa.<\/p>\n Areas that currently belong to the municipalities of S\u00e3o Sebasti\u00e3o, Caraguatatuba, and Ubatuba, on the coast of S\u00e3o Paulo, are estimated to have been landing points for 20,000 Africans. The land belonged to Jos\u00e9 Bernardino de S\u00e1 (1802\u20131855), the Viscount of Vila Nova do Minho\u2014”one of the largest slave traders in the South Atlantic in the nineteenth century,\u201d according to Pessoa. \u201cIt is astounding how these places hold no trace that one of the greatest tragedies in Brazilian history took place there,\u201d he laments.<\/p>\n Books<\/strong> Scientific articles<\/strong>
\nThe first half of the nineteenth century saw a shift in global coffee production to Brazil, due to a series of crises in the Caribbean and the independence of Haiti (1804), which housed the world\u2019s coffee plantations up until that point. The result was a series of impactful changes in agricultural production. In Vassouras, a key coffee plantation area in Rio de Janeiro during the first decades of the coffee cycle, 9% of slave owners were found to own 48% of enslaved persons; they are referred to as \u201cmega-owners.\u201d Coffee growers were pushed to expand production and increase labor productivity so they could meet the demands of a rapidly growing market.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/082-085_hist-plantacoes_304-2-1140.jpg\")
\nPessoa, T. O imp\u00e9rio da escravid\u00e3o. O complexo Breves no vale do caf\u00e9 (Rio de Janeiro, c.1850\u2013c.1888)<\/strong>.<\/em> Rio de Janeiro: Ministry of Justice and Public Security, National Archive, 2018.
\nTomich, D. et al<\/em>. Reconstructing the Landscapes of Slavery. A Visual History of the Plantation in the Nineteenth-century Atlantic World<\/strong>. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021.
\n<\/p>\n
\nViana, I. S. and GOMES, F. S. Do \u201cmercado imperfeito\u201d: Sobre corpos, africanos e m\u00e9dicos no Rio de Janeiro oitocentista<\/a>. Revista Maracanan<\/strong>. No. 21, pp. 77\u201396. 2019.
\nPessoa, T. Sobre o que se quis calar: O tr\u00e1fico de africanos no litoral norte de S\u00e3o Paulo em tempos de pirataria<\/a>. Revista Hist\u00f3ria<\/strong>. Online. Vol. 39. Aug. 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite attempts to erase the iconography of slavery, it has left its mark on both the people and the land","protected":false},"author":613,"featured_media":402046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[241],"coauthors":[1619],"class_list":["post-401595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401595"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402832,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401595\/revisions\/402832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401595"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=401595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}