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A Bahian Counterpoint: Sugar, Tobacco, Cassava, and Slavery in the Reconcavo, 1780-1860. By B.J. BARICKMAN.
Cambridge: C.U.P., 1998, 276 pp. L35.00. ISBN 0 8047 2632 9
Barickman's aim is to challenge the plantationist perspective which pervades discussions of Brazil's colonial and nineteenth-century history. From this viewpoint, the large-scale slave-based cultivation, especially of sugar, for export, dominated Brazil's economy and shaped its society. Although this interpretation has been questioned in recent years, northeast Brazil has continued to be regarded as plantation dominated, so it is here that Barickman locates his investigation.
Using the Reconcavo (the region surrounding Salvador), Barickman seeks to describe and explain the interrelationships between the export economy and the local market, drawing on Ortiz's Cuban Counterpoint...