The coffee economy in Imperial Brazil (c. 1800–c. 1850)

This chapter aims to investigate the development of the slave-based coffee economy in Brazil in the first half of the nineteenth century. We will examine the relationships between land, labor, and capital and, in doing so, shed light on the historical process that led Brazil to become the world’s largest coffee producer in the first half of the 1830s. To achieve this, we will focus on a typical slave coffee-producing region, the municipality of Bananal, located in the Middle Paraíba Valley, in São Paulo, which, broadly speaking, illustrates the broader movement of Brazilian slave coffee production. We will draw on several primary sources, namely: the Inventário dos Bens Rústicos ( 1819 ); Registro Paroquial de Terras (1855-1858); the Listas Nominativas de Habitantes ( 1817 , 1829 ); the postmortem inventories (1810-1860); and finally, personal and business correspondence from the main coffee exporting firm, Maxwell, Wright & Co. From these documents, we will analyze the main elements of the coffee commodity chain, starting with its production in Brazil, proceeding with its commercialization through international ports, and, finally, concluding with its consumption in the major buyer of Brazilian coffee in the nineteenth century: the United States.