Slavery and the Demographic and Economic History of Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1720-1888 (review)
Based on his meticulous analyses of “strictly quantitative sources” (p. 152), Laird W. Bergad, a well-known economic historian of the Caribbean, has produced a fine monograph on the demography of slavery in Minas Gerais, Brazil, from the mining boom in the early decades of the eighteenth century to the year for the abolition of Brazilian slavery. Bergad demonstrates the manner in which the mining economy of Minas Gerais gave way to a successful agricultural economy before the exhaustion of the gold and diamond mines; meanwhile, the slave population expanded significantly through reproduction. As a result, Minas Gerais held the largest number of slaves in Brazil when abolition came along, although the percentage of slaves there declined due to the rapid increase of the free population of color.