CAPITALISM, SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF BRAZILIAN SLAVEHOLDING CLASS: A THEORETICAL DEBATE ON WORLD-SYSTEM PERSPECTIVE

This article examines the connections between slavery and capitalism in the making of the nineteenth-century Brazilian slaveholding class through a theoretical debate of global history and World System perspective. The expansion of the coffee frontier in Parahyba Valley was connected to the world market after the Industrial Revolution, and there planters emerged unifying national slaveholders interests through state institutions. Therefore, the making of the Brazilian slaveholding class in the 1830s and its crisis after the 1860s was as much a part of the World System dynamic as the rise and decline of other ruling classes in the nineteenth century, like the slaveholding classes of Cuba and the southern United States and the bourgeoisies of Europe and the northern United States.