African diaspora, slavery and the landscape of coffee plantation areas in the 19th century Paraíba Valley

Abstract

The article analyses the landscape and labor management devices adopted in the nineteenth century Paraíba Valley slave coffee plantations. It argues that the presence of an enormous mass of enslaved Africans in a quite turbulent local and global conjuncture framed by world competition between different coffee producers and increasingly slave resistance led planters to adopt measures of landscape administration which closely restricted slave autonomy in the labor process.