IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/got/iaidps/239.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The rationale of sharecropping: immigrant bonded laborers and the transition from slavery in Brazil (1830-1890)

Author

Listed:
  • Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza

    (University of Goettingen / Germany)

Abstract

This paper studies the history of bonded labor in the plantations of São Paulo. Brazilian farmers proposed various contracts to bond immigrant households with a credit-labor interlinkage. The aim is to discuss why different laborrental arrangements were adopted. In particular, vis-à-vis the alternatives of fixed rents and wage systems, it asks why sharecropping contracts were offered to European laborers during the transition from slavery in Brazil. Building on some new historical evidence and a formal model, the paper makes two propositions about the rationale of bonded labor and sharecropping. First, the credit dimension was more important to landowners than specific labor-rental regimes. The credit supplied by landowners allowed for the tying of immigrants via indebtedness. This mechanism guaranteed a secure and stable supply of labor to local agricultural elites and permitted the immigration of poor and credit-constrained Europeans. This prepared the insertion of Brazil into the global circuit of the Age of Mass Migration without promoting institutional reforms to attract non-bonded immigrants. Second, sharecropping became the most prevalent contract in the first phase of the transition from slavery not because of an economically rational decision taken by landowners, but more as an emulation of other historical and international experiences with this labor-rental arrangement.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza, 2019. "The rationale of sharecropping: immigrant bonded laborers and the transition from slavery in Brazil (1830-1890)," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 239, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:got:iaidps:239
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www2.vwl.wiso.uni-goettingen.de/ibero/working_paper_neu/DB239.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www2.vwl.wiso.uni-goettingen.de/ibero/working_paper_neu/file://///winfs-uni.top.gwdg.de/hiwi11$/Downloads/WorkingPaper_WitzeldeSouza.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abramitzky, Ran & Braggion, Fabio, 2006. "Migration and Human Capital: Self-Selection of Indentured Servants to the Americas," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(4), pages 882-905, December.
    2. Eswaran, Mukesh & Kotwal, Ashok, 1985. "A Theory of Contractual Structure in Agriculture," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 352-367, June.
    3. Braverman, Avishay & Guasch, J. Luis, 1984. "Capital requirements, screening and interlinked sharecropping and credit contracts," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 359-374, April.
    4. Hoffman, Philip T., 1984. "The Economic Theory of Sharecropping in Early Modern France," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(2), pages 309-319, June.
    5. Alston, Lee J. & Ferrie, Joseph P., 1985. "Labor Costs, Paternalism, and Loyalty in Southern Agriculture: A Constraint on the Growth of the Welfare State," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(1), pages 95-117, March.
    6. Costa, Dora L. & Lamoreaux, Naomi R. (ed.), 2011. "Understanding Long-Run Economic Growth," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226116341, December.
    7. Bell, Clive & Zusman, Pinhas, 1976. "A Bargaining Theoretic Approach to Cropsharing Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 66(4), pages 578-588, September.
    8. Otsuka, Keijiro & Chuma, Hiroyuki & Hayami, Yujiro, 1992. "Land and Labor Contracts in Agrarian Economies: Theories and Facts," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(4), pages 1965-2018, December.
    9. Dora L. Costa & Naomi R. Lamoreaux, 2011. "Understanding Long-Run Economic Growth: Geography, Institutions, and the Knowledge Economy," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number cost10-1, March.
    10. Wegge, Simone A., 2002. "Occupational self-selection of European emigrants: Evidence from nineteenth-century Hesse-Cassel," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 6(3), pages 365-394, December.
    11. Cheung, Steven N S, 1969. "Transaction Costs, Risk Aversion, and the Choice of Contractual Arrangements," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(1), pages 23-42, April.
    12. Quibria, M. G. & Rashid, Salim, 1984. "The puzzle of sharecropping: A survey of theories," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 103-114, February.
    13. de Carvalho Filho, Irineu & Colistete, Renato P., 2010. "Education Performance: Was It All Determined 100 Years Ago? Evidence From São Paulo, Brazil," MPRA Paper 24494, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Shetty, Sudhir, 1988. "Limited liability, wealth differences and tenancy contracts in agrarian economies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 1-22, July.
    15. Carmona, Juan & Simpson, James, 1999. "The “Rabassa Morta†in Catalan Viticulture: The Rise and Decline of a Long-Term Sharecropping Contract, 1670s–1920s," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 59(2), pages 290-315, June.
    16. Stanley L. Engerman & Kenneth L. Sokoloff, 2011. "Land and Immigration Policies," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Development in the Americas since 1500: Endowments and Institutions, pages 212-244, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Alonso, Blanca Sánchez, 2007. "The Other Europeans: Immigration into Latin America and the International Labour Market (1870–1930)," Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 395-426, January.
    18. Samuel Garrido, 2017. "Sharecropping was sometimes efficient: sharecropping with compensation for improvements in European viticulture," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 70(3), pages 977-1003, August.
    19. Alston, Lee J. & Higgs, Robert, 1982. "Contractual Mix in Southern Agriculture since the Civil War: Facts, Hypotheses, and Tests," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(2), pages 327-353, June.
    20. Stanley L. Engerman & Robert A. Margo, 2010. "Free Labor and Slave Labor," NBER Chapters, in: Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, pages 291-314, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Oriana Bandiera, 1999. "On the Structure of Tenancy contracts: Theory and Evidence fron 19th Century Rural Sicily," STICERD - Development Economics Papers - From 2008 this series has been superseded by Economic Organisation and Public Policy Discussion Papers 19, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    2. Ackerberg, Daniel A. & Botticini, Maristella, 2000. "The Choice of Agrarian Contracts in Early Renaissance Tuscany: Risk Sharing, Moral Hazard, or Capital Market Imperfections?," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 241-257, July.
    3. Yutaka ARIMOTO & Tetsuji OKAZAKI & Masaki NAKABAYASHI, 2010. "Agrarian Land Tenancy In Prewar Japan: Contract Choice And Implications On Productivity," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 48(3), pages 293-318, September.
    4. Laurence Amblard & J.P. Colin, 2009. "Reverse tenancy in Romania: Actors' rationales and equity outcomes," Post-Print hal-00454533, HAL.
    5. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Maristella Botticini, 2002. "Endogenous Matching and the Empirical Determinants of Contract Form," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 564-591, June.
    6. Pasquale Commendatore & Martin Currie, 2006. "A Dynamical Analysis Of Alternative Forms Of Agricultural Land Tenure," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 443-463, November.
    7. Raul V. Fabella, 2016. "Why Fixed Rent Contracts are Less Prevalent: Weak Third Party Enforcement and Endogenous Principal Type," UP School of Economics Discussion Papers 201606, University of the Philippines School of Economics.
    8. Yutaka Arimoto & Tetsuji Okazaki & Masaki Nakabayashi, 2005. "Risk, Transaction Costs, and Geographic Distribution of Share Tenancy: A Case of Pre-War Japan," CARF F-Series CARF-F-024, Center for Advanced Research in Finance, Faculty of Economics, The University of Tokyo.
    9. M. A. Taslim, 1992. "A Survey of Theories of Cropshare Tenancy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 68(3), pages 254-275, September.
    10. Bidisha, Sayema Haque & Hossain, Md. Amzad & Alam, Rubaiyat & Hasan, Md. Mehedi, 2018. "Credit, tenancy choice and agricultural efficiency: Evidence from the northern region of Bangladesh," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 22-32.
    11. Ananish Chaudhuri & Pushkar Maitra, 1997. "Determinants of Land Tenure Contracts; Theory and Evidence from Rural India," Departmental Working Papers 199710, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    12. Jacoby, Hanan G. & Mansuri, Ghazala, 2009. "Incentives, supervision, and sharecropper productivity," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 232-241, March.
    13. Lanjouw, Jean Olson, 1999. "Information and the operation of markets: tests based on a general equilibrium model of land leasing in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 497-527, December.
    14. Gary D. Libecap, 2018. "Property Rights to Frontier Land and Minerals: US Exceptionalism," NBER Working Papers 24544, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Jin, Songqing & Deininger, Klaus, 2009. "Land rental markets in the process of rural structural transformation: Productivity and equity impacts from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 629-646, December.
    16. Debapriya Sen, 2005. "Sharecropping, interlinkage, and price variation," Department of Economics Working Papers 05-10, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.
    17. Jon Reiersen, 2001. "Bargaining and Efficiency in Sharecropping," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(2), pages 1-15, May.
    18. Konrad B Burchardi & Selim Gulesci & Benedetta Lerva & Munshi Sulaiman, 2019. "Moral Hazard: Experimental Evidence from Tenancy Contracts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 281-347.
    19. Jung, Yeonha, 2020. "The long reach of cotton in the US South: Tenant farming, mechanization, and low-skill manufacturing," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    20. Ray, Tridip, 1999. "Share tenancy as strategic delegation," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(1), pages 45-60, February.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:got:iaidps:239. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sabine Jaep (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ibgoede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.