Stuart B. Schwartz

Bio: Stuart B. Schwartz is an academic researcher from Yale University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Colonialism & Historiography. The author has an hindex of 24, co-authored 79 publications receiving 1978 citations. Previous affiliations of Stuart B. Schwartz include University of Minnesota & University of Pittsburgh.

Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550-1835

Abstract: This study examines the history of the sugar economy and the peculiar development of plantation society over a three hundred year period in Bahia, a major sugar plantation zone and an important terminus of the Atlantic slave trade. Drawing on little-used archival sources, plantations accounts, and notarial records, Professor Schwartz has examined through both quantitative and qualitative methods the various groups that made up plantation society. While he devotes much attention to masters and slaves, he views slavery ultimately as part of a larger structure of social and economic relations. The peculiarities of sugar-making and the nature of plantation labour are used throughout the book as keys to an understanding of roles and relationships in plantation society. A comparative perspective is also employed, so that studies of slavery elsewhere in the Americas inform the analysis, while at many points direct comparisons of the Bahian case with other plantation societies are also made.

Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil

Abstract: List of tables, figures and maps Preface Part I. The Context: 1. Iberian ways 2. Indigenous ways Part II. Origins and Early Maturity: 3. From islands to mainland: the Caribbean phase and subsequent conquests 4. Conquest society: central areas 5. Maturity in the Spanish Indies: central areas 6. Brazilian beginnings 7. Brazil in the sugar cane 8. The fringes Part III. Reorientations: 9. Late colonial times in the Spanish Indies 10. Brazil in the age of gold and absolutism 11. Epilogue: the coming of independence Bibliography Index.

Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era.

Abstract: Preface Introduction Part I. European Visions of Others in the Late Middle Ages: 1. The outer world of the European middle ages Seymour Phillips 2. Cultural conflicts in medieval world maps John B. Friedman 3. Spain circa 1492: social values and structures Miguel Angel Ladero Quesada 4. The conquests of the Canary Islands Eduardo Aznar Vallejo 5. Tales of distinction: European ethnography and the Caribbean Peter Hulme Part II. Europeans in the Vision of Other Peoples 6. Persian perceptions of Mongols and Europeans David Morgan 7. Sightings: initial Nahua reactions to Spanish culture James Lockhart 8. Dialogues of the deaf: Europeans on the Atlantic Coast of Africa Wyatt MacGaffey 9. Early Southeast Asian categorizations of Europeans Anthony Reid 10. Beyond the Cape: the Portuguese encounter with the Peoples of South Asia Chandra Richard de Silva 11. The 'Indianness' of Iberia and changing Japanese iconographies of Other Ronald P. Toby Part III. Adjustments to Encounter: 12. Essay on objects: interpretations of distance made tangible Mary W. Helms 13. The indigenous ethnographer: the indio ladino as historian Rolena Adorno 14. What to wear? Observation and participation by Jesuit missionaries in late Ming society Willard J. Peterson 15. Demerits and deadly sins: Jesuit moral tracts in late Ming China Ann Waltner Part IV. Observers Observed: Reflections on Encounters in the Age of Captain Cook: 16. Theatricality of observing and being observed: 'Eighteenth-century Europe' 'discovers' the ?-century Pacific Greg Dening 17. North America in the era of Captain Cook: three glimpses of Indian European contact in the age of the American Revolution Peter H. Wood 18. An accidental Australian tourist: or a feminist anthropologist at sea and on land Diane Bell 19. Circumscribing circumcision/uncircumcision: an essay amidst the history of difficult description James A. Boon Part V. Annotated Bibiliography.

Race and Class in Colonial Latin America: A Critique

Abstract: The relationship of society to economy and the interplay of economic realities and social ideology remain central concerns in Latin American history. It is for this reason that the recent article by John K. Chance and William B. Taylor is so important. Nevertheless we believe that there are serious methodological flaws in their study which detract from the value of their results. The statistical errors they have committed and the measures we propose to overcome them should be of interest to all those concerned with the analysis of social systems. We therefore offer our criticisms and suggestions as part of an ongoing dialogue with social historians. Chance and Taylor limit their analysis to one city at a single point in time-Antequera, Oaxaca, in 1792-but the implications of their findings and indeed the extrapolations from the data are used to suggest wider application for their model. The thrust of their argument is that, rather than a rigid system of estates based on color and juridicial definition, a system of socioeconomic groups reflecting the increasing "capitalist oriented economic class system" had emerged in Oaxaca by the late eighteenth century (p. 456). While we find ourselves in agreement with the broad direction of change they suggest, we believe that they have made conceptual and methodological errors that impair the validity and usefulness of their analysis. Their revisionary stance has overdrawn the neglect of class in the historiography of colonial Latin America, as is evidenced in works cited by the authors themselves.' In addition, a definition of class

The art of not being governed : an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia

Abstract: From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm's length from any organized state society For two thousand years the disparate groups that now reside in Zomia (a mountainous region the size of Europe that consists of portions of seven Asian countries) have fled the projects of the organized state societies that surround them-slavery, conscription, taxes, corvee labor, epidemics, and warfare. This book, essentially an "anarchist history," is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states. In accessible language, James Scott, recognized worldwide as an eminent authority in Southeast Asian, peasant, and agrarian studies, tells the story of the peoples of Zomia and their unlikely odyssey in search of self-determination. He redefines our views on Asian politics, history, demographics, and even our fundamental ideas about what constitutes civilization, and challenges us with a radically different approach to history that presents events from the perspective of stateless peoples and redefines state-making as a form of "internal colonialism." This new perspective requires a radical reevaluation of the civilizational narratives of the lowland states. Scott's work on Zomia represents a new way to think of area studies that will be applicable to other runaway, fugitive, and marooned communities, be they Gypsies, Cossacks, tribes fleeing slave raiders, Marsh Arabs, or San-Bushmen.

History Lessons Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World

Abstract: The explanations offered for the contrasting records of long-run growth and development among the societies of North and South America most often focus on institutions. The traditional explanations for the sources of these differences in institutions, typically highlight the significance of national heritage or religion. We, in contrast, argue that a hemispheric perspective across the wide range of colonies established in the New World by the Europeans suggests that although there were many influences, factor endowments or initial conditions had profound and enduring effects on the long-run paths of institutional and economic development followed by the respective economies.

Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development among New World Economies

Abstract: Whereas traditional explanations of differen ces in long-run paths of development acrossthe Americas generally point to the significance of differences in national heritage or religion,we highlight the relevance of stark contrasts in the degree of inequality in wealth, human capital,and political power in accounting for how fundame ntal economic institutions evolved over time.We argue, moreover, that the roots of these disparities in the extent of inequality lay indifferences in the initial factor endowments (dating back to the era of European colonization).We document -- through comparative studies of suffrage, public land, and schooling policies --systematic patterns by which societies in the Am ericas that began with more extreme inequalityor heterogeneity in the population were more likely to develop institutional structures that greatlyadvantaged members of elite classes (and disa dvantaging the bulk of th e population) by providingthem with more political influence and access to economic opportunities. The clear implicationis that institutions should not be presumed to be exogenous; economists need to learn more aboutwhere they come from to understand their relation to economic development. Our findings notonly contribute to our knowledge of why extreme differences in the extent of inequality acrossNew World economies have persisted for centuries, but also to the study of processes of long-runeconomic growth past and present. Stanley L. Engerman Kenneth L. SokoloffDepartment of Economics Department of EconomicsUniversity of Rochester University of California, Los AngelesRochester, NY 14627 Los Angeles, CA 90095and NBER and NBERenge@troi.cc.rochester.edu sokoloff@ucla.edu

The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis

Abstract: This essay, in two parts, argues for the centrality of historical thinking in coming to grips with capitalism’s planetary crises of the twenty-first century. Against the Anthropocene’s shallow hist...