Peopling for Profit in Imperial Brazil by José Juan Pérez Meléndez charts the formation of early migration policy in Brazil in counterpoint to global processes. Professor José Juan Pérez Meléndez is a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean who specializes on nineteenth-century Brazil in broad Atlantic and world history contexts. His research centers on political, business and migratory dynamics that have shaped governmental mechanisms of population control and transport in the Americas. Before arriving at Davis, Professor Pérez Meléndez completed a postdoctoral stay as a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.

Prof. Pérez Meléndez also focuses on the Caribbean as a secondary field of research. His current work on the region is twofold. On the one hand, he is examining nineteenth-century slavery in the context of the illegal slave trade among Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles and Cuba. On the other hand, he is engaged in the public history of formal debates on Puerto Rican decolonization from the 1950s onward.

His research lies in the following realms: The long nineteenth century, world history, Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil, the Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, migrations, slavery and the illegal slave trade, business history and companies, nineteenth-century colonization, comparative/connected histories, intellectual history, Puerto Rico, US imperialism, decolonization movements.

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