A paixao da Bahia pelo bacalhau salgado inglesa: dos mares de Terra Nova as lojas portuguesas da Cidade Baixa de Salvador, 1822-1914 [Bahia’s Passion for British Salted-Cod: From the Seas of Newfoundland to the Portuguese Shops of Salvador’s Cidade Baixa, 1822-1914]

Abstract

The Newfoundland Banks-Brazil trade in salted cod was a remarkable nineteenth-century phenomenon, a classic case of colonial staple commodity trade (though fishing carried out by ships from Lisbon off the consumption in Brazil rose from 0.4 pounds in 1819, to 2.8 pounds per capita in 1872, 2.0 pounds per capita in the 1890’s and 1,94 pounds per capita annually during 1911-1914. The supply or commodity chain had significant elements of market power. coast of Newfoundland dates back to the end of the fourteenth century). The region from Cape Cod to Labrador was the center of one of the New World’s first agro-food industries: the production of dried salted cod. Salted and dried cod (along with salted herring from the Baltic region) was among the first foods made “durable” by simple preservation techniques at the site of production (THOMPSON; COWAN, 1995). Cod fish from the Newfoundland region linked the poor fisherman using bait-lines with the African slaves toiling on the sugar plantations of the Brazilian Recôncavo and with Portuguese immigrants in Bahia during the early nineteenth century. The emphasis here is upon quantity not price data (any ways, the demand for salted cod is price inelastic, so supply changes lead to sharp price swings). Over a century (1819-1919) dried salted exports from Newfoundland to Brazil rose from 13,067 quintals to 310,036 quintals. Annual per capita dried cod

Department

Economics

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Journal Title

Revista do Instituto Geografico e Historico da Bahia

Document Type

Article

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