Despite the interdisciplinary title of Luna and Klein’s book about the economic and demographic history of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, this study does not exhibit an explicitly interdisciplinary focus or methodology. The book is an extension of Luna and Klein’s Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo, 1750–1850 (Stanford, 2003). It has relatively little to say in depth about the evolution of São Paulo’s demography during the period until the last of the book’s nine chapters.
Luna and Klein look into classic issues of economic history, focusing on how a backward region in Brazil became the country’s richest and most important state within a century (1850–1950). The authors analyze the birth of São Paulo’s modern agricultural economy (Chapter 1), how the state became the world’s leading exporter of coffee (Chapter 4), the consequences of this transformation in public governance and finance (Chapters 2 and 3), foreign trade and...