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Reconsidering Textile Production in Late Colonial Brazil: New Evidence From Minas Gerais

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Douglas C. Libby
Douglas C. Libby*
Affiliation:
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
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Scholars have long recognized that the final quarter of the eighteenth century in Brazil witnessed an agricultural renaissance in which traditional exports expanded and new tropical products began to find their way overseas (Prado Júnior 1967; Novais 1979; Arruda 1980, 1986; Alden 1984). In recent years, more attention has been paid to the diversified productive activities supplying an increasingly consolidated domestic market during this period (Brown 1986; Barickman 1991; Fragoso 1992). Although most of those activities were agricultural, artisan trades also flourished and domestic industry appears to have been growing, particularly the cottage textile industry. My examination of an unexplored and unusual primary source has revealed grounds for assuming that cloth and thread were being made throughout much of late colonial Brazil. The primary evidence also suggests that this cottage industry resembled the incipient stages of so-called European proto-industrialization to a remarkable degree, although important differences cannot be ignored. Nor does the regionalized nature of the source allow for generalizing about the colony as a whole. This research is thus a preliminary investigation that calls for further research. It nevertheless points out the potential importance of domestic industry within the overall Brazilian colonial economy and stimulates awareness of its complexities.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , 1997 , pp. 88 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by the University of Texas Press

References

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