Poor man's crop? Slavery on Brazilian cotton regions (1800-1850)

The literature about cotton production in Brazil during the nineteenth century in large part associates cotton as a “poor man’s crop” – cultivated by small farmers who did not employ a large slave labor force. Information from population maps between 1800 and 1840, however, shows that slaves represented half the population in Maranhão, the most important cotton exporter in Brazil until 1850. This represented a higher share than that observed in any northeast region in Brazil, and was comparable to those recorded in the United States’ Cotton South. This paper shows that, during the cotton boom years (1790-1820), not only large plantations cultivated the cotton exported from northeast Brazil to Britain and other countries in Europe, but also that slave prices were higher in Maranhão than in other provinces.