Lois Recascino Wise - Household Economy and Urban Development: Sao Paulo 1765-1836

Household Economy and Urban Development

Household Economy and Urban Development: So Paulo, 1765 to 1836

Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof

Between 1765 and 1836 the household economy of So Paulo was transformed from a subsistence to a market-oriented economy. This transformation was paralleled by dramatic changes within society, existing kinship systems, and the organization of the household. The author suggests that this fundamental change in the mode of production was intentional, engineered by an interested elite of merchants and plantation owners who utilized local government bodies to promote the construction of centralized markets, roads, warehouses, and port facilities. The same group sponsored changes in local administration and land law in order to increase and control the resultant commerce in sugar and coffee. This book, based on household-level census data, looks at economic development at the micro level and analyzes how the change took place at a juncture in history when prior options seemed to disappear.

Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof is associate professor of history at the University of Kansas.

DELLPLAIN LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES

PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION
WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

EDITOR
David J. Robinson
Syracuse University

EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE

William M. Denevan
University of Wisconsin

John H. Galloway
University of Toronto

John Lynch
University of London

Robert McCaa
University of Minnesota

Linda Newson
University of London

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Kay Steinmetz

So Paulo, 1765 to 1836

Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof

Dellplain Latin American Studies, No. 18

First published 1986 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1986 by the Department of Geography, Syracuse University

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kuznesof, Elizabeth Anne.
Household economy and urban development.
(Dellplain Latin American studies; 18)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. So Paulo (Brazil: State)Economic conditions.
2. HouseholdsBrazilSo Paulo (State)History.
3. Community developmentBrazilSo Paulo (State)
History. I. Title. II. Series: Dellplain Latin
American studies; 18.
HC188.S3K89 1986 307.764098161 85-31491

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00886-4 (hbk)

This is a book about So Paulo, Brazil and the way in which the extraordinary expansion of the city and the economy in the nineteenth century affected people's jobs, living conditions, the way they organized the running of their households, and even household size and fertility. The legendary resiliency of the Brazilian kinship structure and the way that the Brazilian family as a social, economic, and political unit has pervaded historiography--from the colonial period to the present--made me especially interested to analyze the impact of the industrial revolution and what is known as the "demographic transition" on the Brazilian household and on the family.

Even more important than analyzing the impact of these larger social and economic transformations on the household and family is the determination of the process itself. The means by which the household interacted with the economy, what the patterns of interaction were, and how they were determined in a given time and place are significant questions which are seldom addressed. In this study those interrelationships and the process of their interaction and change are traced diachronically through three manuscript censuses, property inventories, genealogies, and other records in a period of major economic transformation in the community of So Paulo.

It is not possible to acknowledge here everyone who has helped in the development of this book. Dauril Alden has followed this project from the beginning and before the beginning. Rather like the postman--through training, example, and the reading and criticism of many drafts--he has continued to provide assistance and unremitting support William P. McGreevey, Kingsley Davis, Eduardo Arriaga, Albert Fishlow, Nicia Vilela Luz, Nestor Goulart Reis Filho, Richard Morse, David Brading, Simon Schwartzman, Gary Nigel Howe, and Nelson do Valle Silva have also assisted me with training, advice, or suggestions somewhere along the way. I also wish to acknowledge the guidance and help I received from Ody Siqueira de Noronha and Maria Gloria Martinelli of the Arquivo do Estado de So Paulo. I want to thank Robert J. Oppenheimer and Dauril Alden for reading and making useful suggestions on the final manuscript. The research in Brazil was supported by a Fulbright-Hays pre-doctoral fellowship and a pre-doctoral fellowship from the University of California at Berkeley. The General Research Fund of the University of Kansas also supported supplementary research on this project at the Library of Congress.

Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof

The relationship of household and family organization to changes in the larger economy (e.g., commercialization, industrialization) has long fascinated and baffled scholars. Data that specifically link the household and/or family unit to economic change have proved elusive, and most studies do little more than note temporal crosscultural coincidences of demographic and residential characteristics with those of economic development. The means by which the household interacted with the economy, what the patterns of interaction were, and how they were determined in a given time and place are significant questions which are seldom addressed. Even less accessible are the changes in the dynamics of household organization in conjunction with economic development in terms of informal economic and social exchanges and household and family formation.

This book attempts to relate changes in household economy, composition and size to the larger changes in the economy and society of So Paolo in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. My original questions in beginning this study were sparked by studies of the impact of modernization in Western Europe on age at marriage, completed family size, household size and composition.