The 'Labour Question' in Nineteenth Century Brazil: Railways, Export Agriculture and Labour Scarcity

Abstract

This paper examines changing patterns of labour relations in nineteenth-century Brazil associated with the building of railways and expansion of export agriculture. It addresses the 1850s-1880s period, decades when the `labour question' became a pressing issue for contemporaries. The extinction of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1850 posed the problem of finding alternative supplies of labour at a time of increasing agro-export production. In 1852 effective action to start the building of railways was taken. As part of efforts to improve conditions in the sugar and coffee sectors, several concessions were approved. From the middle of the century through to the 1870s, the expansion of coffee cultivation and railway construction were closely inter-related phenomena in the southern provinces of Brazil and shaped the debate about labour.

Full Text (PDF format, 48 pages, 150.4kbs)