‘The same contract that is suitable for your Excellency’: Immigration and emulation in the adoption of sharecropping‐cum‐debt arrangements in Brazil (1835‒80)
研究了巴西圣保罗咖啡种植园在奴隶制向自由劳动过渡初期（1840-50年代）采纳分成制与欧洲契约劳工安排的原因，发现其并非因生产率优势，而是早期提议者的地位优势影响了后续合同选择，且信用-劳动捆绑长期存在，促进了贫困欧洲移民。
Abstract This paper studies the history of contractual choice in coffee plantations of São Paulo, Brazil. It focuses on the consolidation of non‐captive labour markets in the early phases of the transition from slavery in the country, particularly in the 1840s–50s. Vis‐à‐vis the alternatives of fixed rents and fixed payments per time worked or piece rates, the paper examines the rationale for the adoption of sharecropping arrangements with European bonded labourers. New archival evidence suggests that sharecropping had no obvious productivity advantage over alternative labour–rental arrangements in this period, and that the adoption of sharecropping arrangements resulted from the positional advantage of its first proposers, who influenced later choices of contractual design. A credit‐labour tie‐up long outlived the original sharecropping arrangements, in turn allowing for the immigration of poor and credit‐constrained Europeans, paving the way to insert Brazil into the circuits of mass migration without promoting institutional reforms to attract non‐bonded immigrants.