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European markets almost exclusively relied on Caribbean sugar produced by slave labor until abolitionist campaigns began around 1800. Thereafter, importing Asian sugar and transferring plantation production to Asia became a serious option for the Western world. In this book, Ulbe Bosma details how the British and Dutch introduced the sugar plantation model in Asia and refashioned it over time. Although initial attempts by British planters in India failed, the Dutch colonial administration was far more successful in Java, where it introduced in 1830 a system of forced cultivation that tied local peasant production to industrial manufacturing. A century later, India adopted the Java model in combination with farmers' cooperatives rather than employing coercive measures. Cooperatives did not prevent industrial sugar production from exploiting small farmers and cane cutters, however, and Bosma finds that much of modern sugar production in Asia resembles the abuses of labor by the old plantation systems of the Caribbean.

InThe Deepest Wounds, Thomas D. Rogers traces social and environmental changes over four centuries in Pernambuco, Brazil's key northeastern sugar-growing state. Focusing particularly on the period from the end of slavery in 1888 to the late twentieth century, when human impact on the environment reached critical new levels, Rogers confronts the day-to-day world of farming--the complex, fraught, and occasionally poetic business of making sugarcane grow.Renowned Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, whose home state was Pernambuco, observed, \"Monoculture, slavery, and latifundia--but principally monoculture--they opened here, in the life, the landscape, and the character of our people, the deepest wounds.\" Inspired by Freyre's insight, Rogers tells the story of Pernambuco's wounds, describing the connections among changing agricultural technologies, landscapes and human perceptions of them, labor practices, and agricultural and economic policy. This web of interrelated factors, Rogers argues, both shaped economic progress and left extensive environmental and human damage.Combining a study of workers with analysis of their landscape, Rogers offers new interpretations of crucial moments of labor struggle, casts new light on the role of the state in agricultural change, and illuminates a legacy that influences Brazil's development even today.

This study of the wholesale trade in Brazilian sugar challenges previous imperial and mercantilist perspectives and presents the Atlantic economy in its earliest phases as an integrated, inter-imperial system not subject to monopolies and effective imperial regulation.

A classic text long out of print, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar traces the historical development of slave labor and plantation agriculture in Martinique during the period immediately preceding slave emancipation in 1848. Interpreting these events against the broader background of the world-economy, Dale W. Tomich analyzes the importance of topics such as British hegemony in the nineteenth century, related developments of the French economy, and competition from European beet sugar producers. He shows how slaves' adaptation-and resistance-to changing working conditions transformed the plantation labor regime and the very character of slavery itself. Based on archival sources in France and Martinique, Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar offers a vivid reconstruction of the complex and contradictory interrelations among the world market, the material processes of sugar production, and the social relations of slavery. In this second edition, Tomich includes a new introduction in which he offers an explicit discussion of the methodological and theoretical issues entailed in developing and extending the world-systems perspective and clarifies the importance of the approach for the study of particular histories.

Two tropical commodities-coffee and sugar-dominated Latin American export economies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.When Sugar Ruled: Economy and Society in Northwestern Argentina, Tucumán, 1876-1916presents a distinctive case that does not quite fit into the pattern of many Latin American sugar economies.During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the province of Tucumán emerged as Argentina's main sugar producer, its industry catering almost exclusively to the needs of the national market and financed mostly by domestic capital. The expansion of the sugar industry provoked profound changes in Tucumán's economy as sugar specialization replaced the province's diversified productive structure. Since ingenios relied on outside growers for the supply of a large share of the sugarcane, sugar production did not produce massive land dispossession and resulted in the emergence of a heterogeneous planter group. The arrival of thousands of workers from neighboring provinces during the harvest season transformed rural society dramatically. As the most dynamic sector in Tucumán's economy, revenues from sugar enabled the provincial government to participate in the modernizing movement sweeping turn-of-the-century Argentina.Patricia Juarez-Dappe uncovers the unique features that characterized sugar production in Tucumán as well as the changes experienced by the province's economy and society between 1876 and 1916, the period of most dramatic sugar expansion.When Sugar Ruledis an important addition to the literature on sugar economies in Latin America and Argentina.

The idea that sugar, plantations, slavery, and capitalism were all present at the birth of the Atlantic world has long dominated scholarly thinking. In nine original essays by a multinational group of top scholars, ###Tropical Babylons# re-evaluates this so-called sugar revolution. The most comprehensive comparative study to date of early Atlantic sugar economies, this collection presents a revisionist examination of the origins of society and economy in the Atlantic world.Focusing on areas colonized by Spain and Portugal (before the emergence of the Caribbean sugar colonies of England, France, and Holland), these essays show that despite reliance on common knowledge and technology, there were considerable variations in the way sugar was produced. With studies of Iberia, Madeira and the Canary Islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, Brazil, and Barbados, this volume demonstrates the similarities and differences between the plantation colonies, questions the very idea of a sugar revolution, and shows how the specific conditions in each colony influenced the way sugar was produced and the impact of that crop on the formation of tropical Babylons--multiracial societies of great oppression.Contributors:Alejandro de la Fuente, University of PittsburghHerbert Klein, Columbia UniversityJohn J. McCusker, Trinity UniversityRussell R. Menard, University of MinnesotaWilliam D. Phillips Jr., University of MinnesotaGenaro Rodrguez Morel, Seville, SpainStuart B. Schwartz, Yale UniversityEddy Stols, Leuven University, BelgiumAlberto Vieira, Centro de Estudos Atlanticos, MadeiraThis collection of nine original essays provides the most comprehensive comparative study to date of early Atlantic sugar economies as well as a revisionist examination of the origins of society and economy in the Atlantic world. Focusing on areas colonized by Spain and Portugal (before the emergence of the Caribbean sugar colonies of England, France, & Holland), these essays show that despite common knowledge and technology, there were considerable variations in the way sugar was produced, which leads Schwartz to question the longheld notion of a Caribbean sugar revolution. He also examines the role of plantation colonies in the formation of tropical Babylons--multiracial, oppressive societies.This collection of original essays provides a comparative study of early Caribbean sugar economies as well as a revisionist examination of the origins of society and economy in the Atlantic world. Schwartz also examines the role of plantation colonies in the formation of multiracial, oppressive societies.The idea that sugar, plantations, slavery, and capitalism were all present at the birth of the Atlantic world has long dominated scholarly thinking. In nine original essays by a multinational group of top scholars, ###Tropical Babylons# re-evaluates this so-called sugar revolution. The most comprehensive comparative study to date of early Atlantic sugar economies, this collection presents a revisionist examination of the origins of society and economy in the Atlantic world.Focusing on areas colonized by Spain and Portugal (before the emergence of the Caribbean sugar colonies of England, France, and Holland), these essays show that despite reliance on common knowledge and technology, there were considerable variations in the way sugar was produced. With studies of Iberia, Madeira and the Canary Islands, Hispaniola, Cuba, Brazil, and Barbados, this volume demonstrates the similarities and differences between the plantation colonies, questions the very idea of a sugar revolution, and shows how the specific conditions in each colony influenced the way sugar was produced and the impact of that crop on the formation of tropical Babylons--multiracial societies of great oppression.Contributors:Alejandro de la Fuente, University of PittsburghHerbert Klein, Columbia UniversityJohn J. McCusker, Trinity UniversityRussell R. Menard, University of MinnesotaWilliam D. Phillips Jr., University of MinnesotaGenaro Rodrguez Morel, Seville, SpainStuart B. Schwartz, Yale UniversityEddy Stols, Leuven University, BelgiumAlberto Vieira, Centro de Estudos Atlanticos, Madeira

The multigenerational history of one of Louisiana's oldest dynasties and its empire of sugar and land.

This is a detailed history of a Mexican sugar plantation, the first such account to be published in English. The subject of the study is the Cortes plantation, which was established on the outskirts of Cuernavaca in about 1535 by Hernan Cortes, the conqueror of New Spain and the first Marques del Valle de Oaxaca. The plantation remained the property of his heirs and descendents until the twentieth century when, like most other sugar plantations in Morelos, it ceased production. Professor Barrett bases his account largely on the records of the Cortes plantation, a remarkably continuous series of documents for an agricultural enterprise. He deals with the records in three principal ways: as representative of the history of the sugar industry in Mexico; as representative of the history, external relationships, structure, and management of Spanish colonial plantations; and as a chapter in the history of sugar technology. He presents a detailed picture of the entire operation of the plantation. He explains how water and land rights were acquired, the latter little by little, until a good-sized plantation was formed. He describes methods of irrigation, planting cycles, weeding and harvesting schedules, and, with the aid of charts and inventories, reconstructs the plan of the mill, describes its equipment, and traces the processing of the cane into sugar. Finally, he discusses the livestock and labor needed to run the plantation and mill -- oxen and mules to plow, mules to carry the sugar to market, unskilled fieldworkers, both slave and hired, and highly skilled sugarmasters. The appendixes contain much useful supplementary material. The book is illustrated with drawings, maps, and reproductions of manuscripts.

This social and economic history of Mauritius, from French colonization in 1721 to the mid-1930s, describes changing relationships between different elements in the society, slave, free and maroon, and East Indian indentured populations. First published in 1999, it brings the Mauritian case to the attention of scholars of slavery and plantation systems.