ABSTRACT
Examining places like Jamestown helps us learn about European implantation in the Americas; examining port cities helps us understand better the economic operation and social organization of mature colonial societies. A.J.R.Russell-Wood, in this essay on Brazilian ports, illustrates the variety of functions which ports served. On one level, they acted as points of contact between Europe and its colonies. In mature societies, the Europeans first entered the Americas through these ports. As the implanted societies and economies stabilized, the ports increasingly developed and interacted with colonial and imperial hinterlands. Urban populations diversified in order to fulfill better the market economic (and, in the case of Brazil, political) functions which cities assumed. Moreover, at least in colonial Brazil, the ports’ populations came to resemble those in Atlantic European cities; class and racial stratification increased.
