Sugar Rush: Sugar and Science in the British Caribbean

This article examines the contrasting evolution in sugar refining in Jamaica and Barbados incentivized by Mercantilist policies, changes in labor systems, and competition from foreign sugar revealing the role of Caribbean plantations as a site for experimentation from the eighteenth through mid-nineteenth century. Britain's seventeenth- and eighteenth-century protectionist policies imposed high duties on refined cane-sugar from the colonies, discouraging colonies from exporting refined sugar as opposed to raw. This system allowed Britain to retain control over trade and commerce and provided exclusive sugar sales to Caribbean sugar plantations. Barbadian planters swiftly gained immense wealth and political power until Jamaica and other islands produced competitive sugar. The Jamaica Assembly invested heavily in technological innovations intended to improve efficiency, produce competitive sugar in a market that eventually opened to foreign competition such as sugar beet, and increase profits to undercut losses from duties. They valued local knowledge, incentivizing everyone from local planters to chemists, engineers, and science enthusiasts to experiment in Jamaica and publish their findings. These publications disseminated important findings throughout Britain and its colonies, revealing the significance of the Caribbean as a site for local experimentation and knowledge.

The Impact of the British Labour Party on the Dissidence of Milovan Djilas 1950–1958

The article analyses the influence of the leadership of the British Labour Party on the first Cold War dissident, Milovan Djilas. Up until his dissidence in 1954, the main Yugoslav official for official relations with the British Left was Djilas. He had many contacts with the members of the British Labour Party such as Morgan Phillips, Aneurin Bevan and Jennie Lee. While many of these contacts were professional, Djilas established a firm friendship with Bevan, under whose influence Djilas gradually abandoned communism and embraced the Labour movement. When he called for another party in Yugoslavia (one similar to the Labour Party), he was condemned by Tito’s regime.

History and Foreign Policy: Franco-British Cooperation towards Greek Independence 1828–1830

On 6 July 1827 the Treaty of London committed France, Britain, and Russia to working together to mediate the question of Greek independence. This was one of the first examples of Franco-British cooperation after the Napoleonic Wars. Although officials on both sides of the Channel publicly celebrated Franco-British cooperation over the Greek affair, behind closed doors policy makers remained suspicious of each other's intentions. This article explores how the memory and experience of the Napoleonic conflict influenced French and British policy making during the Greek independence struggle between 1828 and 1830. It argues that the memories of these conflicts fostered cultures of Franco-British rivalry that were discernible in the highest levels of policy making as well as in parliamentary and press opinion. These misgivings, embedded in notions of natural and historic rivalry, played an important role in mediating how policy makers viewed, judged, responded to, and justified their own and their counterpart's policies and policy motivations.