American Mirror investigates how American and Brazilian reformers worked together to ensure that slave emancipation would advance the interests of capital. From the 1850s to the 1880s, this anti-slavery coalition – which included diplomats, engineers, entrepreneurs, journalists, merchants, missionaries, planters, politicians, scientists, and students, among others – consolidated wage labor as the dominant production system in their countries. The book shows that these reformers were not romantic humanitarians, but cosmopolitan modernizers who worked together to promote labor-saving machinery, new transportation technology, scientific management, and technical education. They successfully used such innovations to improve production and increase trade.
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