The Sugar Industry in Pernambuco: Modernization Without Change, 1840-1910 by Peter L

The President and Fellows of Harvard College The Sugar Industry in Pernambuco: Modernization without Change, 1840-1910 by Peter L. Eisenberg Review by: Richard Graham The Business History Review, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Spring, 1975), pp. 151-153 Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3112991 . Accessed: 04/02/2014 14:00 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The President and Fellows of Harvard College is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Business History Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.83.205.53 on Tue, 4 Feb 2014 14:00:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions fewer looms than their American counterparts? What was the nature of post-war refinancing that aided the survival of mules? There are also some queries regarding the quantitative analysis. At times numbers are used without any rationale for their choice. An example is the analysis of the costs involved in scrapping well-functioning mules (55-56). At other times, the choice of data may be questioned. For example, in revising Jones' index, the capital costs constructed by Phelps-Brown and Handfield-Jones (106-107) are chosen and indices recently presented by C. F. Feinstein - the generally regarded standard source - are not considered. This choice increases estimated efficiency gain. These quibbles over data are almost certainly unimportant in the perspective of Sandberg's general conclusions but in this type of quantitative analysis close attention must be paid to data. On balance, this monograph adds valuable insights into the British cotton textile industry in decline. The nature of choices has been care- fully studied and the general conclusions are convincing. Nonetheless, we still lack a full history of the industry in the twentieth century. THE SUGAR INDUSTRY IN PERNAMBUCO: MODERNIZATION WITHOUT CHANGE, 1840-1910. By Peter L. Eisenberg. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1974. Pp. xvi - 289. $15.00. Reviewed by Richard Graham Professor of History University of Texas at Austin The northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco was the center of world sugar production from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Indeed, even in the first quarter of the nineteenth century it retained an important share of the world sugar market. But in the latter half of the nineteenth century, faced with the competition of European beet sugar and highly mechanized production in the Caribbean, Pernambuco - with its backward technology, low capital resources, and slave labor - confronted a desperate economic crisis. Simultaneously, the gradual erosion of the slave-based labor system culminating in the abolition of in slavery 1888, created a social crisis of equal or even greater impor- tance. Not all classes were equally affected, however. A few planter families monopolized practically all the arable land. Although they were unable to call upon the necessary capital resources to overcome the economic crisis, they exerted sufficient political power to draw substantial government funds into efforts at technological innovation that cushioned its And impact. through their overwhelming economic power locally, they passed on a large share of their losses to the sugar workers. Professor Peter L. Eisenberg, of Rutgers University, skillfully dissects these crises, linking them to each other and suggesting stimulating lines of as to their thought causation and effect. To do so he calls upon a rich of detailed body economic and social information that he compiled from patiently uncovered sources in widely scattered repositories in Brazil and the United States. The principal documentary bases of the tion are investiga- contemporary newspapers and pamphlets, combined with the BOOK REVIEWS 151 This content downloaded from 128.83.205.53 on Tue, 4 Feb 2014 14:00:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions manuscript correspondence of the state government archive in Recife. In constructing elaborate tables and manipulating the data, he reveals an inventive methodology through which he calculates fluctuations in such factors as profits, costs, capital, productivity, wages, international trade, and labor resources. Eisenberg's major argument is that modernization occurred without bringing about change. To advance it, he defines modernization much more narrowly than is customary among English-speaking authors who see it as a process that affects social and economic structures, ideology, and world view. Eisenberg understands the term simply as "technological advance and the abolition of forced labor" (215). It is clear that modernization in the larger sense did not occur, despite some small steps in that direction. Curiously, giving the subtitle of his book, Eisenberg also shows that not much modernization even in the narrower sense took place. As Eisenberg notes, "most Pernambucan senhores de engenho [planters] did not modernize in the later nineteenth century" (44). Furthermore, at other moments, Eisenberg himself slips into the broader definition. At one point (219) he admits that modernization means not only technological change, but also the division of labor and the reorgan- ization of production. When contrasting present-day Cuba and Brazil, he says that Pernambuco "still awaits a more generally beneficial modernization" (236). Eisenberg maintains that modernization "failed to produce real change" (215). What does he mean by "real change"? He is rarely explicit, but I gather that real change would be one that altered "the nature of basic relationships between Brazil and northern hemisphere countries, or between the owners of the means of production and the labor force" (3). Such a view explains why he goes to such length to show that the free worker after abolition was no better off than the former slaves, although in a footnote he backs off from such an assertion. One wonders whether even better working conditions would have altered the relationship with the employer. In discussing central sugar factories, he seems to equate financial failure with a failure to create any change, thus implying that financial success would have been equivalent to "change," an impression that becomes stronger in the light of the rosy picture he paints of the subsequently more centralized and integrated usinas. There are places where Eisenberg creates straw men in order to assume a revisionist stance as he knocks them down. Taking issue with those historians who have pointed to the protest actions of slaves as one of the factors leading to the abolition of slavery, he posits that abolition was a gradual process resulting from the planters' own needs. But then he admits that the former explanation may have been true for Center- South Brazil; which is, after all, where the bulk of the slaves were located, al- where political power was centered, and where the explanation has ways been applied. Eisenberg makes a big point of comparing the financial success of Brazilian-owned central sugar factories in the later 1880s with the dismal financial record of the earlier British-owned companies. On the whole, he attributes the failure of the latter to their immorality and their national- ity. He agrees with a contemporary observer that the British only 152 BUSINESS HISTORY REVIEW This content downloaded from 128.83.205.53 on Tue, 4 Feb 2014 14:00:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "pump[ed] out the subsidies, the interest guarantees" (101), but, since he does not discuss how much British capital was invested (and lost) nor what was the total paid out in guarantees, it is difficult to know how much pumping was going on. He takes issue with my assertion that British-owned companies, despite their financial failure, made a substantial contribution toward the modification of northeast Brazil by con- tributing the machinery (inadequate as it was) and the innovative experience. But Eisenberg ends up agreeing that the Brazilians did learn from the experience, did use the machinery, and that the result was substantial technical advance. Although I had referred, without evidence, to the harsh impersonality of labor relations in central sugar factories, and although Eisenberg discusses rural labor conditions, he does not explore the significance of the shift to industrial labor despite a reference or two to early strikes in Recife. In short, he seems to be engaged in some sort of false polemic as to whether it was Brazilians or Englishmen who fostered change; thus an opportunity is lost for a sophisticated analysis of the factors of entrepreneurial success. The willingness to tackle controversial issues is one of many praise- worthy features of this book. It makes a substantial contribution to the historiography of nineteenth century Brazil, which has been so inade- quately studied, and has the special virtue of drawing attention to a region that has all too often been ignored by historians more anxious to chronicle the rise of booming economies than the decline of improverished ones. In this task, Professor Eisenberg has also served the interests of all those historians concerned with the social and economic problems of develop- ment, international dependency, and business experience. JOHN McLOUGHLIN'S BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE, 1847-48. Edited by William R. Sampson. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1973. Pp. li + 179. $12.50. Reviewed by Patricia E. Roy Assistant Professor of History University of Victoria William Sampson correctly observes that McLoughlin's outward correspondence offers "a tantalizing glimpse into the varied ventures of trading an early 'merchant adventurer"' (xlv).

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