Rice in the Atlantic world: labor, workers, and landscape (15th - 19th century)

• Grant number: 24/15508-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: February 29, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: Rafael de Bivar Marquese
• Grantee: Alberto Camargo Portella
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research aims to analyse the labor organization of rice producing areas in the New and the Old World from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The objective is to understand and compare the logics of labor which were essencial for the riziculture in that period, in the captaincies of the Portuguese America and futures provinces of the Empire of Brazil and in some rice production areas of northern Italy. We intend to compare these diversified places of production, with particular landscape and labor regimes, offering a new contribution to the debate about the origins of rice cultivation in the Americas. Also, due to their connection to the sphere of production, the cereal's commerce and consumption will be examined to provide further explanations to the development of an Atlantic market for rice. (AU)