The Colonial Economy and the Particularity of Sugar Manufacturing

The object of the present work is to analyze colonial sugar manufacturing in order to understand its particularities in relation to European manufactures. Through iconographic resources and period accounts we will seek to highlight the manufacturing character already existing since the first mills in the sixteenth century, emphasizing the means of work and the organization of production that were used in export production. The manufacturing improvement that occurred in the seventeenth century will be analyzed in its implications on workers and productivity, demonstrating that slave production relations were compatible with technical and organizational progress typical of mercantile capitalism. Cooperation based on the division of labor - manufacturing - is presented not only as compatible with slave labor but also as a necessity for the systematic use of this type of production relations. Such relations of production further deepen the separation of manual labor from intellectual labor, a defining characteristic of manufacturing, and thus imbue sugar manufacturing with a particularity.

Autorentext

Gabriel Magalhães Beltrão es licenciado en Sociología por el Instituto de Ciencias Sociales de la Universidad Federal de Alagoas y actualmente es profesor del Instituto Federal de Alagoas (IFAL).