In so far as its starting point for the analysis of the process of agrarian change is the demise of the slave plantation system, Thomas H. Holloway's essay on labour organization in the Brazilian coffee industry provides certain points of contact with the papers included in Part IV. However, in this particular case the social and economic changes resulting from the large-scale immigration of European labour were so massive and far-reaching that they render any discussion of the changing status of the slaves themselves of minimal interest compared with the examples studied in the final section. Whereas-in the case of northeast Brazil's sugar cane industry an uncertain future for the commodity's markets meant that the decline and abolition of slavery was not accompanied by a relative shortage of labour (see the papers by Peter L. Eisenberg and Jaime Reis in Part IV), in the Sao Paulo region the decline of slavery occurred precisely at the time when great new opportunities were opening up for the cultivation and export of coffee. The coffee planters could never have taken full advantage of these new possibilities if they had tried to rely on local Negro labour; it is doubtful if even inter-regional transfers of ex-slaves would have supplied the quantity of manpower required. Instead, by encouraging the immigration of vast numbers of European labourers (mainly Italians) they totally transformed the social structure of the state of Sao Paulo.