Doug Yarrington, A Coffee Frontier: Land, Society, and Politics in Duaca, Venezuela, 1830–1936. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997. ix + 267 pp. $19.95 paper.

Abstract

Doug Yarrington's A Coffee Frontier, a new study of class formation and agrarian change in Venezuela, forms part of a small but important body of research on peasant producers of export crops in Latin America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most work on the history of commercial agriculture in Latin America has addressed issues related to the plantation and its expansion at the expense of peasant communities. But a growing number of scholars, Yarrington among them, are looking at the experiences of small cultivators who grew crops such as coffee, tobacco, or cacao for export—frequently in frontier areas. This important research adds nuance to our understanding of commercial agriculture, class structure in the countryside, and the behavior of social groups known as small farmers by some and precipitate peasantries by others.