Food supply was a critical element of the administration of colonial cities in the Americas. It depended on a complex trading system that involved several agents and was constantly regulated by municipal institutions. Richard Graham examines this issue in the city of Salvador, Bahia, between 1780 and 1860. Graham is a well-known Brazilianist who has published, among others, a classic study of Imperial Brazil, entitled Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Stanford, CA, 1990). Now, with this book, he has turned his focus on to the urban food provisioning system in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Brazil.

Although the subject of the book is the food trade in Salvador, it is not an economic history but rather a typical social history. The trade networks are like a window that allows Graham to analyze the personal interactions and the various social groups and individuals occupied in such activity: “Commerce in foodstuffs offers a lens through which we can examine more closely the workings of a ranked society, the connections and conflicts across strata, the search for identity, the contestation of place, and the vitality of commercial enterprise” (p. 30).

The author's decision to observe closely the social groups in an urban environment of a slave society have led him to recognize the flexibility of the hierarchies and the frequent mobility of individuals such as the slaves, freed men and women, and poor whites who worked in the food trade. However, this approach does not imply a disregard of the class divisions and power relations that shaped Brazilian society at that time. Graham is aware that hierarchical fluidity is typical of urban class relations and can be found especially among street vendors, grocers, boatmen, and butchers.

Indeed, one strength of the book is the detailed analysis of the social, cultural, and economic divisions present among the people who distributed and sold food. Graham analyzes with rare ability the complex intersection of racial, ethnic, national, and occupational categories that shaped the identities of those engaged in the food trade. Despite social mobility and permeable hierarchies, the author identifies a stratification present in such activities.

Thus, the street vendors were mostly African women – slaves or former slaves – while the shopkeepers were mostly Portuguese men. Nevertheless, these different groups interacted and had close connections with each other. One of the essential links that tied people of different hierarchical positions together was the system of credit. In this respect, grocers enjoyed a special position because at the same time they were both debtors of international traders and creditors of street vendors. Graham emphasizes that these hierarchies were not completely rigid and that there were ways to achieve economic and social upward mobility. As example, he writes about Ana de São José da Trindade, an African freed woman who became a middle-class householder and a slave-owner by selling goods door-to-door.

In the first part of the book Graham analyzes the food trade in Salvador and the people engaged in it. It is an essentially synchronic approach, even when he briefly contextualizes specific periods. In the second part, the focus is on the transformations that food provisioning suffered between 1780 and 1860. Two issues discussed by Graham deserve greater attention: the first is the period of the struggle for independence in Bahia (1822–1823) and the second is the introduction of liberal reforms from the beginning of the nineteenth century.

One of the few episodes of war in the process of Brazil gaining independence from Portugal took place in Salvador. The Portuguese army was besieged in the city for twelve months before being defeated by the Brazilians. During this period, ensuring the provisioning of the troops and the population became a decisive part of the war: “For Salvador the war turned on the supply of food. The challenge was to make sure one's own side had food and the other did not – something that commanding officers on both sides knew well” (p. 144).

As might be expected, the two staples of the population's diet in Bahia, manioc meal and meat, were the object of concerns and military strategies. The patriots sought to ensure control of Nazaré, a town that had a large production of manioc. At the same time, they worried about the cattle traders, many of them Portuguese. Ensuring the supply of food was a high priority for Brazilian commanders, and at the same time, it was important to prevent food arriving for the besieged Portuguese army in Salvador: “Sieges, an ancient military tactic, may culminate in storming the ramparts, but their essential device is cutting off of the enemy's food supply” (p. 146). Despite some difficulties, the patriots were successful and were able to block much of the food sent to the Portuguese, a situation that forced them to evacuate the city in July 1823.

Graham also examines how, after the Brazilian victory in Bahia, some changes occurred in the public administration of food commerce in Salvador. During the colonial period, the city council regulated it based on a paternalist ideology associated with the idea that the king was the protector and responsible for the welfare of the people. In the late eighteenth century, enlightened Portuguese and Brazilians, influenced by François Quesnay and Adam Smith, argued for the adoption of liberalizing measures in the food trade. However, even after the liberal constitution of 1824, it was very difficult to adopt the new policies. The author identifies two major sources of resistance to the implementation of liberalism in the regulation of the food trade in Salvador: firstly, the city councillors, who feared the loss of influence and power, and secondly, the poor urban people, who understood that the price control of foodstuffs was essential for their survival.

In 1837, a great revolt took place in Salvador, the Sabinada. Brazilian free people of color and poor whites were extremely active during the conflict, demanding changes in administration policies. Although defeated, some demands of the rebels were met when the legal government was restored in 1838, especially a control on the price of meat. For Graham, this episode and another riot that took place in 1858 demonstrated that the new liberal political regime of the Brazilian Empire was able to succeed only when it incorporated some practices from colonial times. Inspired by E.P. Thompson's idea of the moral economy, Graham examines how the poor people of Salvador appropriated some elements of the paternalist ideology to ensure benefits and protection from economic liberalism.

The author's fine and comprehensive research of primary sources and his remarkable knowledge of Brazilian historiography, both classical and recent works, are especially admirable. His research strategy was to read manuscript records of city licenses granted to grocers, butchers, boatmen, and street vendors. Then he was able to find other documents about these people, such as wills and post-mortem estate inventories, which allowed him to examine their property and their economic, social, and family relations, placing them in a broader context, far beyond their simple engagement in the food trade. With this methodological approach, Richard Graham has written an excellent book which provides a major contribution to the social and labor history of Brazilian slave society.