
The Raw Cotton Trade: Brazil, Portugal, and Europe during the Industrial Revolution
Author(s): Felipe Souza Melo (Author)
- Publisher: Brill
- Publication Date: June 18, 2026
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 492 pages
- ISBN-10: 9004757554
- ISBN-13: 9789004757554
Book Description
Without Brazilian cotton, Europe’s first factories would have struggled to thrive. This book reveals how Maranhão plantations, Northeastern Brazilian smallholders, and Lisbon merchants sustained an Atlantic trade that supplied France, England, and beyond. It exposes how diverse labor systems, imperial monopolies, and foreign merchant networks shaped global commerce in ways that historians have overlooked. Drawing on unpublished archives and using new data, Felipe Souza Melo demonstrates how Brazil powered early industrialization and why scholarship has largely ignored it. To have a more comprehensive story of cotton and capitalism, it is essential to start with Brazil, and this book provides the missing chapter.
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About the Author
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