Following an 8-year long dispute over cotton subsidies, Brazil and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding on April 21, 2010, effectively paving the way for settling the dispute. This paper argues that cotton subsidies are just the tip of the iceberg while a number of other,...

The article compares the two largest raw cotton regions in Brazil between the 1750s and 1810s. Through the analysis of new series of cotton exports and parish records, we argue that the high pattern of slave ownership, together with the organization of labor and specialization in cotton, made...