Despite the extensive theoretical literature on dependency (largely Latin American in origin), well-researched studies on the links between the export sector and the politics of national economic development in Latin America are rare. Peter Smith’s study of beef and politics in Argentina, Maurice Zeitlin’s provocative essay on nineteenth-century Chile, and Jonathan Levin’s monograph on nineteenth-century Peru are among the few. Yet Brazil, site of Latin America’s largest industrial park and the heartland of a classical agro-export area, has not been satisfactorily analyzed.

This can in part be explained by the heavy-handed ideological approach, or “mechanistic readings of class interests” (p. 279), that has dominated much of the scholarship. Large-scale coffee planters have been seen as dominating the entire pre-1930 process, leaving historians unable to explain how, if an agro-export oligarchy so completely controlled economic policy, a clearly differentiated, dynamic industrial sector emerged. How did “Big Coffee’’ find its back against the wall in the 1920s, as both São Paulo and federal government policy repeatedly (although not invariably, to be sure) contradicted its interests on monetary and exchange rate policy, immigration, and the administration of coffee support programs?

In his outstanding monograph, Font attacks this question by offering an in-depth portrait of a deeply divided agricultural sector, as Big Coffee lost its traditional predominance and suffered continuous financial, technological, and organizational problems, especially after 1890. Meanwhile, an “alternative economy based on independent agrarian producers and their urban allies” (p. 13) emerged, with strong links to the São Paulo Republican Party (PRP). This “alternative economy” was to achieve a “capitalist breakthrough” (p. 3)—a characterization that contradicts the holistic thesis of big planter hegemony throughout the 1920s. By the eve of the Revolution of 1930, Big Coffee had become so disenchanted as to join a national conspiracy against the PRP, the very São Paulo party that had once incarnated its interests. Only a few months later the coffee interests bitterly regretted their endorsement of the coup led by Getúlio Vargas, who put a definitive end to São Paulo’s dominance in national politics.

Critics of this book must nevertheless acknowledge the intensively researched picture of São Paulo agriculture (patterns of land ownership and production confirming the earlier work of Thomas Holloway) and the accompanying political mobilization, which has been charted in a separate data base (co-authored with E. Barzelatto). There is also rich detail on policy battles over such issues as immigration, credit and banking, tariffs, export taxes, railways, and highways.

Font lays bare the growing desperation of the big planters, led by luminaries such as Antonio Prado, godfather of the dissident Partido Democrático founded in 1926. Their media voices, led by O Estado de São Paulo, thundered against the “tyranny” of the PRP and not infrequently indulged in xenophobic attacks on the immigrant community, especially the Italians, the destruction of whose newspaper plants they happily encouraged.

This study has important implications for all who seek to understand the nature of change (or lack thereof) in agro-export economies. Font argues persuasively that their potential for diversification is determined by the “degree of interconnection between local processes of production and consumption.” In São Paulo’s case, the alternative economy” of small and medium-sized producers “fueled the domestic market, making possible “continuous experimentation with small-scale accumulation and entrepreneurship” (p. 274).

Font’s excellent study is not without its vulnerabilities. It is highly embedded in certain sources, especially O Estado de São Paulo, and by concentrating on São Paulo is relatively weak on the national context, both economic and political. It is also a study primarily of the elite and therefore tells us little about the darker side of living and working conditions for rural and urban laborers. Font’s work, however, is proof of how much historians of Latin America have to gain from the research of historically minded sociologists. His book offers a wealth of historical detail, subjecting it to a sophisticated sociological analysis of “mobilization and contention,” based on the methodology developed by Charles Tilly. Let us hope that the author’s call for more “yeomanly research on specific regions or cases” is answered by other scholars of modem Latin America.