Proto-industrialisation in a Slave Society: The Case of Minas Gerais
As originally proposed in the early I970s, the proto-industrialisation model was meant to serve as a more complete explanation of that phase in the general transition from agrarian feudalism to industrial capitalism rather vaguely referred to as the period of manufactures. Early proponents emphasised the role of proto-industrialisation in channelling development toward fully-fledged factory system industrialisation.' Proto-industrial theories dealing with the complex interplay of economic, social, demographic, cultural and technological processes eliminate many of the uncertainties generated by the original debates over the general process of transition. Certainly, it is no longer possible to deny the contributions of rural/peasant non-agricultural productive activities to the development of early factory industry as a whole, as well as to social changes leading to the emergence of a proletariat. In more recent years, however, the proto-industrialisation model has been challenged to account for examples of historical development of an obvious proto-industrial nature, which did not lead to the emergence of factory-based industrialisation. Proto-industrialisation is no longer exclusively viewed as a preparatory phase in the industrialisation process. As L. A. Clarkson likes to insist, a good many examples of rural and urban production in the secondary sector were clearly related to protoindustrialisation as a general economic trend in certain pre-industrial societies even though they did not constitute an initial phase of full scale industrialisation. In fact, the cottage industries of many regions were subject to decay, the causes of which were varied and sometimes quite complex, usually resulting in a process of de-industrialisation.2 Clarkson and others also disagree with the chronological limitations of the earlier 1See, for example, F. Mendels, 'Proto-industrialization: The First Phase of the Industrialization Process', Journal of Economic History, vol. 32 (1972), pp. 24I-61. 2 L. A. Clarkson, Proto-industrialisation: The First Phase of Industrialisation? (London, 1985), pp. 28-38. Also H. Kisch, 'The Textile Industries in Silesia and the Rhineland: A Comparative Study', in P. Kriedte, H. Medick & J. Schlumbohm, Industrialisation before Industrialisation (London/Paris, 1981), pp. 178-200, especially pp. 179-87.