Brazil’s history has been highlighted by a series of territorial occupations inspired by changing economic cycles tied to the export markets. The decline of one export product has led to its substitution by a new one using preexisting structures. Such was the case of coffee in south-central Brazil, where, in replacing sugar production, it allowed the region to surpass economically the sugar regions in the north.
In the case of Sào Paulo, the change from sugar to coffee production was accomplished in a relatively brief time in the second half of the nineteenth century. This book, however, does not specifically deal with the expansion of the coffee industry, although coffee was the product around which all Paulista life revolved. Rather, it focuses on the society created by the economic transformation caused by this industry—from the frontier environment of the caboclo to the organized society of immigrants, railroads, and new municipalities. The nucleus around which this social transformation occurred was, of course, the fazenda.
These are the principal themes developed by Vangelista. However, the reader should not assume that the book is a treatise on the development of the frontier society of São Paulo in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is less than that. The author merely reconstructs a picture of rural Paulista society created by the march of coffee—the role of the fazenda, the life of the fazendeiro, the social relationships within the rural world, and the life of the municipalities—through the collection, translation, and transcription of appropriate passages of varying length from already published works. These excerpts are tied together by the author’s 24-page introduction in which she outlines the outstanding features of the society created by the expansion of the coffee industry. No major new questions are asked nor are new approaches to the study of this important subject suggested. Indeed, the book’s audience—unlike the one for Vangelista’s important 1982 work on immigration and the labor market of São Paulo between 1850 and 1930—will probably consist of nonspecialists—mostly Italian. They should benefit from the scope and quality of the works selected and from the excellent translations of the non-Italian texts.
