Gold, Coffee, and Slaves: Brazil and “the So-Called Primitive Accumulation”

Abstract

The role of Latin America in the long history of capitalism has been the subject of a number of debates over the twentieth century and beyond. The present article takes the specific cases of gold extraction and coffee production in Brazil over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to explore the potentialities offered by Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation, especially when read from a perspective that puts the plurality of historical time at the center of the discussion. In this way the authors hope to contribute to outlining the heterogeneity of capitalism as a historical system and the various roles played by Brazil—the largest slave society of the early modern era—in its development.