Bell's prize-winning monograph traces the evolution of the rural economy in the grasslands of Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. In a country notable for its plantation agriculture and tropical exports, the ranching and farming activities of temperate regions have not, until now, enjoyed the attention they merit. The book follows in a time-honored Brazilianist tradition of local and regional studies of rural economy and society, self-consciously echoing earlier works on agricultural regions by Stanley Stein and Warren Dean.

In establishing the unique character of the regional economy within the Brazilian setting, Bell provides original insights on ranching operations, including a discussion of finance and profitability, as well as the role of slave labor. The book then turns to the changes wrought in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ranchers organized to pursue improvements in livestock herds, and fencing haltingly diffused across the campanha. The traditional processing of jerked beef gradually gave way, with a lag, to the more advanced preparation of refrigerated meat exports in the early twentieth century. Throughout the book, but especially in the chapter on the rise of modern meat packing, Bell provides explicit comparisons with the larger, more advanced, and better-known pastoral economies of the Rio de la Plata, especially Uruguay. Beyond simply charting major changes within southern Brazil, the book provides an array of analytical insights on the main factors explaining the gap between the region and its wealthier neighbors to the south. In a tellingly titled chapter on the “slow path to modernization” Bell exploits his mastery of the primary and secondary sources to consider the broader array of economic and political conditions bearing on the pace of development in the region. Fencing was slowed by an absence of necessary legal reforms, tariff reductions made it difficult to compete with imported beef for decades, and transportation-cost-reducing railroads were late in arriving to the region. These delays nearly reduced the area to an effective appendage of Uruguay's more successful ranching economy, with its higher levels of economic and legal infrastructure. But, by the end of the period considered, the campanha was catching up. The rise of cereals production helped diversify the state's economy, and though still behind the Spanish American ranching areas, Rio Grande do Sul was, by 1920, the most technologically advanced of Brazil's agricultural regions.

Neither foreign investors, nor a more abstract notion of dependency, take on a large role in either the region or in Bell's analysis. Crafted as a historical geography, this erudite study eschews formal hypothesis testing and econometrics in favor of more traditional treatments of sources and questions. In this regard, the book resembles the richly textured old economic history more than the new. As both varieties remain in short supply for Brazil the book is an especially welcome addition. Brazilianists will find in it a sorely needed study of a neglected regional question, while economic historians, specialists on South America, and students of pastoral economies will find it an invaluable reference for comparative work.