Cuban Sugar Industry. Transnational Networks and Engineering in Mid-Nineteenth Century Cuba by Jonathan Curry-Machado

AbstractEver since the interregnum from 1811 to 1816 of Lieutenant Governor General Stamford Raffles, British trading interests had been firmly established in colonial Indonesia. The implementation of the Cultivation System in 1830 on Java by the Dutch colonial government was an attempt to bring this potentially rich colony under Dutch economic control, but it is usually considered a departure from the principles of economic liberalism and a phase during which private entrepreneurs were barred from the emerging plantation economy. However, on the basis of census data and immigration records, and with reference to recent literature on the development of the nineteenth-century sugar industry, this article argues that British trading houses present on Java in the early nineteenth century continued to play an important role in the development of the production there of tropical goods, and that the emerging plantation economy attracted a modest influx of technicians and employees from various European nations. This article proposes to consider the Cultivation System and private enterprise not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary in making the cane sugar industry of Java the second largest in the world after that of Cuba.

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The Old Cuba Trade: Highlights and Case Studies of Cuban-American Interdependence during the Nineteenth Century

The Business History Review ◽

10.2307/3112547 ◽

1964 ◽

Vol 38 (4) ◽

pp. 456-478 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Roland T. Ely

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Case Studies ◽

Cuban American ◽

Sugar Trade ◽

Cuban Sugar

The profitability and the mechanisms of the old Cuban sugar trade are illustrated through Professor Ely's study of the leading businessmen involved.

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Introduction

French Novels and the Victorians ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197266090.003.0008 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Juliette Atkinson

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

French Literature ◽

Historical Context ◽

Transnational Networks ◽

Foreign Literature ◽

Do So

Victorian readers, real and fictional, often claimed to throw immoral French novels into the fire, but their engagement with French literature was far more complex than such acts suggest. This book strives to bring clarity to the ongoing critical debate regarding the insularity and prudishness of nineteenth-century readers. The socio-historical context of Anglo-French relations, like attitudes to foreign literature, moved between attraction and distrust; politicians worked to strengthen an ‘entente cordiale’ and tourists rushed across the Channel, but there was also a wariness of French radicalism and imperial ambitions. The book explores reactions to the contemporary French fiction that circulated in England between 1830 and 1870, drawing on reviews, letters, novels, and bibliographical data to do so. It aims to challenge preconceptions about Victorian Gallophobia, reflect on complex contemporary notions of immorality, and argue that French literature was not simply ‘received’ but emerged through complex transnational networks.

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From the Indian Ocean to the Pacific: Affranchis and Petits-Blancs in New Caledonia

PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies ◽

10.5130/portal.v9i1.2567 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Karin Elizabeth Speedy

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Indian Ocean ◽

New Caledonia ◽

Sugar Industry ◽

Production Equipment ◽

Skilled Workers ◽

The Pacific ◽

The Indian Ocean ◽

The Rich

The sugar crisis of 1860 in Reunion motivated the migration of thousands of Réunionnais to New Caledonia. Along with sugar planters, wealthy enough to transport their production equipment as well as their indentured workers, significant groups of both skilled and unskilled labourers made their way from Reunion to the Pacific colony in the second half of the nineteenth century. In previous publications, I have focused my attention on the sugar industry and the immigration of the rich planters and their coolies. While I have drawn attention to the heterogeneity of the sugar workers and have signalled the arrival and numeric importance of tradespeople, manual and low skilled workers from Reunion, I have not yet described these immigrants in detail. This is because this group has been largely ignored by history and details surrounding their circumstances are scant. In this paper, I discuss the background and origins of these people and highlight some of the fascinating stories to emerge from this migration to New Caledonia and beyond.

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Avoiding Holdup: Asset Specificity and Technical Change in the Cuban Sugar Industry, 1899–1929

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050700015060 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 54 (3) ◽

pp. 628-653 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Alan Dye

Keyword(s):

Technical Change ◽

Sugar Industry ◽

Economic Structure ◽

Asset Specificity ◽

Western Region ◽

Site Specificity ◽

Incentive Structure ◽

Post Colonial ◽

Cuban Sugar ◽

Relative Decline

Asset specificity can have profound influences on the economic structure of a country. An example is post-colonial Cuba. This article demonstrates that the existence of site specificity in assets generated problems of holdup for sugar mill owners in their contractual relations with cane suppliers. Recognition of that incentive structure offers an institutional explanation for the post-1900 concentration of U.S. investment in the eastern provinces. To reduce transaction costs, mill managers avoided investing in the western part of the island where the sugar industry was well established. A consequence was the relative decline of the western region.

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