Sugar was the single most valuable bulk commodity traded internationally before oil became the world’s prime resource. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, cane sugar production was pre-eminent in the Atlantic Islands, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Subsequently, cane sugar industries in the Americas were transformed by a fusion of new and old forces of production, as the international sugar economy incorporated production areas in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Sugar’s global economic importance and its intimate relationship with colonialism offer an important context for probing the nature of colonial societies. This book questions some major assumptions about the nexus between sugar production and colonial societies in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, especially in the second (post-1800) colonial era.

Sugar was the single most valuable bulk commodity traded internationally before oil became the world’s prime resource. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, cane sugar production was pre-eminent in the Atlantic Islands, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Subsequently, cane sugar industries in the Americas were transformed by a fusion of new and old forces of production, as the international sugar economy incorporated production areas in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Sugar’s global economic importance and its intimate relationship with colonialism offer an important context for probing the nature of colonial societies. This book questions some major assumptions about the nexus between sugar production and colonial societies in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia, especially in the second (post-1800) colonial era.

Chapter 1. Introduction
Sidney W. Mintz

Chapter 2. Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800 to 1940, An Introduction
Ulbe Bosma, Juan Giusti-Cordero and G. Roger Knight

Chapter 3. Technology, Technicians and Bourgeoisie: Thomas Jeoffries Edwards and the Industrial Project in Sugar in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Java
G. Roger Knight

Chapter 4. An Anatomy of Sugarlandia: Local Dutch Communities and the Colonial Sugar Industry in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Java
Arthur van Schaik and G. Roger Knight

Chapter 5. Sugar and Dynasty in
Yogyakarta Ulbe Bosma

Chapter 6. Hybridity, Colonial Capitalism and Indigenous Resistance: The Case of the Paku Alam in Central Java
Sri Margana

Chapter 7. ‘A Teaspoon of Sugar ...’: Assessing the Sugar Content in Colonial Discourse in the Dutch East Indies, 1880 to 1914
Joost Coté

Chapter 8. Sugar, Slavery and Bourgeoisie: The Emergence of the Cuban Sugar Industry
Manuel Barcia

Chapter 9. The Spanish Immigrants in Cuba and Puerto Rico: Their Role in the Process of National Formation in the Twentieth Century (1898 to 1930)
Jorge Ibarra

Chapter 10. Compradors or Compadres? ‘Sugar Barons’ in Negros (The Philippines) and Puerto Rico under American Rule
Juan Giusti-Cordero

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index