The end of plantation? Coffee and land inequality in early twentieth century São Paulo

Renato Colistete () and Maria Lucia Lamounier

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper examines the concentration of land ownership in the leading coffee export region in the early twentieth century, the northeast area of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Critics of the so-called plantationist perspective have rejected the classic view that large estates shaped colonial and nineteenth century Brazilian economy and society, arguing instead for a major role of small and medium-sized landholdings. We describe the size distribution of landholdings and estimate alternative measures of land concentration based on a detailed agricultural census of the state of São Paulo. We find that, despite variation across municipalities, large farms and latifundia controlled most of the productive resources in northeast São Paulo, resulting in high levels of inequality when compared to those of other agrarian societies in the past. These results contrast with the view of the critics of classic historiography and suggest that the large estate and high concentration of wealth were remarkable features at least in the most important coffee region in Brazil during the early twentieth century.

Keywords: Land inequality; coffee plantations; Gini index; Generalized Entropy indexes; São Paulo; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N56 O13 O18 Q15 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-his and nep-pke
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:31833

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