The Sugar Economy of Puerto Rico
The Sugar Economy of Puerto Rico

Author: Arthur David Gayer

Publisher:

Published: 1938

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13:

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Presents a factual analysis of the Puerto Rican Sugar industry and its relation to the general economy of the island. Also interprets the findings in relation to questions of public policy affecting the sugar industry.

American Sugar Kingdom
American Sugar Kingdom

Author: César J. Ayala

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009-11-15

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0807867977

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Engaging conventional arguments that the persistence of plantations is the cause of economic underdevelopment in the Caribbean, this book focuses on the discontinuities in the development of plantation economies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic in the early twentieth century. Cesar Ayala analyzes and compares the explosive growth of sugar production in the three nations following the War of 1898--when the U.S. acquired Cuba and Puerto Rico--to show how closely the development of the Spanish Caribbean's modern economic and social class systems is linked to the history of the U.S. sugar industry during its greatest period of expansion and consolidation. Ayala examines patterns of investment and principal groups of investors, interactions between U.S. capitalists and native planters, contrasts between new and old regions of sugar monoculture, the historical formation of the working class on sugar plantations, and patterns of labor migration. In contrast to most studies of the Spanish Caribbean, which focus on only one country, his account places the history of U.S. colonialism in the region, and the history of plantation agriculture across the region, in comparative perspective.

Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico
Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico

Author: Luis A. Figueroa

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2006-05-18

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0807876836

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The contributions of the black population to the history and economic development of Puerto Rico have long been distorted and underplayed, Luis A. Figueroa contends. Focusing on the southeastern coastal region of Guayama, one of Puerto Rico's three leading centers of sugarcane agriculture, Figueroa examines the transition from slavery and slave labor to freedom and free labor after the 1873 abolition of slavery in colonial Puerto Rico. He corrects misconceptions about how ex-slaves went about building their lives and livelihoods after emancipation and debunks standing myths about race relations in Puerto Rico. Historians have assumed that after emancipation in Puerto Rico, as in other parts of the Caribbean and the U.S. South, former slaves acquired some land of their own and became subsistence farmers. Figueroa finds that in Puerto Rico, however, this was not an option because both capital and land available for sale to the Afro-Puerto Rican population were scarce. Paying particular attention to class, gender, and race, his account of how these libertos joined the labor market profoundly revises our understanding of the emancipation process and the evolution of the working class in Puerto Rico.

Agrarian Puerto Rico
Agrarian Puerto Rico

Author: César J. Ayala

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-01-30

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1108488463

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Challenges dominant interpretations of colonialism's impact on the economy and social structuring of a US-owned Caribbean colony.

Slave Families and the Hato Economy in Puerto Rico
Slave Families and the Hato Economy in Puerto Rico

Author: David M. Stark

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 2017-05-24

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0813063183

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Scholarship on slavery in the Caribbean frequently emphasizes sugar and tobacco production, but this unique work illustrates the importance of the region’s hato economy—a combination of livestock ranching, foodstuff cultivation, and timber harvesting—on the living patterns among slave communities. David Stark makes use of extensive Catholic parish records to provide a comprehensive examination of slavery in Puerto Rico and across the Spanish Caribbean. He reconstructs slave families to examine incidences of marriage, as well as birth and death rates. The result are never-before-analyzed details on how many enslaved Africans came to Puerto Rico, where they came from, and how their populations grew through natural increase. Stark convincingly argues that when animal husbandry drove much of the island’s economy, slavery was less harsh than in better-known plantation regimes geared toward crop cultivation. Slaves in the hato economy experienced more favorable conditions for family formation, relatively relaxed work regimes, higher fertility rates, and lower mortality rates.

Sugarlandia Revisited
Sugarlandia Revisited

Author: Ulbe Bosma

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9781845453169

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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.

Sweetness and Power
Sweetness and Power

Author: Sidney W. Mintz

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 1986-08-05

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1101666641

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A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times. "Like sugar, Mintz is persuasive, and his detailed history is a real treat." -San Francisco Chronicle

Worker in the Cane
Worker in the Cane

Author: Sidney Wilfred Mintz

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1974

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780393007312

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Worker in the Cane is both a profound social document and a moving spiritual testimony. Don Taso portrays his harsh childhood, his courtship and early marriage, his grim struggle to provide for his family. He tells of his radical political beliefs and union activity during the Depression and describes his hardships when he was blacklisted because of his outspoken convictions. Embittered by his continuing poverty and by a serious illness, he undergoes a dramatic cure and becomes converted to a Protestant revivalist sect. In the concluding chapters the author interprets Don Taso's experience in the light of the changing patterns of life in rural Puerto Rico. This is the absorbing story of Don Taso, a Puerto Rican sugar cane worker, and of his family and the village in which he lives. Told largely in his own words, it is a vivid account of the drastic changes taking place in Puerto Rico, as he sees them.