The Sugar Cane Industry An Historical Geography from Its Origins to 1914

About this book

Sugar cane has long been one of the world's most important cash crops, and the sugar cane industry can be regarded as one of the world's oldest industries. The industry involves three basic processes: the cultivation of cane, the milling of the cane to extract the juice and the rendering of the juice into crystal sugar. The Sugar Cane Industry is a geography of the sugar cane industry from its origins to 1914. It describes the spread of the industry from India into the Mediterranean during medieval times, across to the Americas in the early years of European colonization, and its subsequent diffusion to most parts of the tropics. It examines changes in agricultural techniques over the centuries, the significance of improvements in milling and manufacturing techniques, and the role of the industry through its demand for labor in forming the multicultural societies of the tropical world.

Contents

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
A note on statistics

Introduction: the taste for sweetness
1. Sugar cane and the manufacture of sugar
2. The Eastern origins

Part I. The Sugar Industry in the West:
3. The Mediterranean sugar industry: c. 700–1600
4. The Atlantic sugar industry: c. 1450–1680
5. The American sugar industry in the eighteenth century
6. The innovations of a long nineteenth century: 1790–1914
7. The geographical responses to the forces of change: 1790–1914

Part II. The Sugar Industry in the East:
8. Asia: c. 1750–1914
9. The Indian Ocean and Pacific colonies: 1800–1914

Conclusion
Appendix
List of references
Index

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