Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee County, 1850-1900

This is the updated and reissued 1985 edition of Stein's seminal 1957 book, "Vassouras", an academic study of a 19th century coffee plantation in Brazil. It is interesting for the Brazil scholar, accessible, and thoroughly-researched. This edition has photos that give readers a bit more sense of time and place than the original book.Vassouras is a town in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state. From about 1820 to 1900, it arced from backwater to a cradle of fabulous nouveau wealth based on monoculture coffee production, and back again. Its rise and fall were based on two elements: access to virgin forest land which could be cleared to plant coffee bushes and access to slave labor to work the enormous plantations. Both land and laborer were brutally abused, and by 1888, when Brazil became the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, Vassouras's farmland was nearly sterile for lack proper farming techniques. In the years to come, neighboring Sao Paulo state became the next (and still) coffee king of Brazil, as it adapted modern agriculture and wage labor. Stein's classic work remains fresh today, a fascinating look at slavery-era plantations and shortsighted farm management. Explanations of an ossified and polarized society that reproduced patterns of colonial plantations --a farm model that continues to skew Brazilian land patterns today-- are insightful. As Vassouras planters saw their assets evaporate as their labor force and acreage plummeted in value, the foundation for an entire economy collapsed. Their choices brought about this collapse, and Stein is able to chronicle them in detail.The work is strong, but suffers from a grating failure common to academic works that are converted into mass publications: maps. The book has no good maps. The sole map is a near-useless rendering of the hills around Vassouras. But the book deals at length with roads and railways and the annual odyssey of transporting crops to Rio, with immigration from Minas and Sao Paulo states. A dozen clear maps would have made this book much better.

Vassouras is a Brazilian province reputed to be one of the richest coffee producing areas between 1850-1890. In his book of the same name, Stein uses this province as a model through which the rise and fall of coffee plantations during that era may be observed. The main themes of the book were the plantation lifestyle, the shortcomings of plantations owners as managers, the difficulties faced with coffee production and trade, and the rise and fall of the coffee industry in Vassouras. I believe that the writer's intention was to reveal how the resources and the opportunities afforded to plantation owners were ill managed and misused during the brief period of prosperity. In financial transactions, land use and coffee production, the blunders of the fazendieros and the coffee society at large were exposed. The author summarized his sentiments by stating, `The prosperous edifice erected by coffee planters in the years immediately preceding and following 1850 held within it elements of destruction.' (page 213) Stein effectively brings the view that coffee production in Vassouras was fraught with lack of forethought as evidenced by the rapid and irreconcilable decline of the economy. Attached to the main themes were reports that gave a glimpse into the daily lifestyle and the routine of plantations. The details supplied were very successful in giving a clear, visually dynamic illustration of the town of Vassouras, the plantation house and the coffee fields in terms of physical appearance, daily activities and even special occasions. There was a reasonable degree of balance of the themes discussed as far as it concerned the relations between masters and slave and, barring to the shortcomings of the fazendieros, the insurmountable obstacles that were faced such as transportation of goods to Rio de Janeiro and climatic conditions. It is an excellent source for almost any information concerning coffee plantation life during that period. There was some bias against the fazendieros however, I believe that the account given was reasonably fair and, with the evidence given, that bias seems totally justifiable.I was greatly impressed by the author use of sources mainly because there was quite a large amount of primary sources used. Primary sources included newspapers, oral interrogations, proceedings from Agricultural Congresses, documents stored in archives of Vassouras and national archives and information stored at notarial offices such as police reports, wills, advertisements, sales of goods, posters and pamphlets. This enabled the author the report specific details of the fazenda architecture, purchases daily routines and interactions between members of the province. There was very limited use of secondary sources.For descriptions of the fazendas, mostly documents obtained in the archives were used and fortunately plantation owners were very thorough with their records. These details served to enhance the images construed by the reader. For example the