PDF Slavery; the State; and Islam by Mohammed Ennaji in History

Description

This study examines the history of the sugar economy and the peculiar development of plantation society over a three hundred year period in Bahia; a major sugar plantation zone and an important terminus of the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing on little-used archival sources; plantations accounts; and notarial records; Professor Schwartz has examined through both quantitative and qualitative methods the various groups that made up plantation society. While he devotes much attention to masters and slaves; he views slavery ultimately as part of a larger structure of social and economic relations. The peculiarities of sugar-making and the nature of plantation labour are used throughout the book as keys to an understanding of roles and relationships in plantation society. A comparative perspective is also employed; so that studies of slavery elsewhere in the Americas inform the analysis; while at many points direct comparisons of the Bahian case with other plantation societies are also made.