O CRÉDITO ENTRE A PEQUENA E A GRANDE LAVOURA: UMA ANÁLISE SOBRE A ECONOMIA CAFEEIRA PAULISTA (1889-1930)

Abstract

The current paper seeks to counter an idea that has been accepted for a long time in the field of Brazilian agrarian history: the plantationist perspective. On one hand, we do not fail to emphasize the social and economic importance of the large coffee farming in São Paulo economy, in the late nineteenth to the twentieth century. On the other hand, we try to highlight the diversity of land structure on which the coffee expansion in São Paulo has been set, highlighting the role of the small farming, which, opposing what has been shown by the historiography, hasn’t dedicated its production only for the domestic market; on the contrary, it has also assumed an export function. We have grasped the variety of productive units in this economic complex through primary sources originary from general register offices – agricultural mortgages and pledges – that revealed the distinct strategies for funding practiced among the different scales of production.