The Sugar Trade

Der Zuckermarkt ist weltweit - und ganz besonderes angesichts der jüngsten Entwicklungen in Osteuropa und Kuba - von besonderer Bedeutung. Dieses einzigartige Nachschlagewerk bietet umfangreiche Hintergrundinformationen zur Geschichte des Zuckers, zu Anbau und Verbrauch. Ausführlich werden der wachsende Produktionssektor sowie Tendenzen in Weltproduktion, Verbrauch und Handel erläutert und umfangreiches Zahlenmaterial zu Produktion, Export, Vertrieb, Verträgen, Verbrauch, Handel und Preisen zur Verfügung gestellt. Das Buch beleuchtet die Produktionspolitik der weltgrößten Zuckererzeuger, die künftige Entwicklung in Osteuropa und Kuba sowie mögliche Zuckerersatzstoffe, den Zuckerhandelszyklus und Marketingketten und den Zuckerterminmarkt (Futures). (11/97)

This book provides a thoroughly researched and richly illustrated account of a key element of the early modern Atlantic world: the sugar trade linking Brazil, Portugal, and the Netherlands. The study seeks to illuminate the economic, social, political, and cultural dimensions of this commerce. Indeed, trade supported Brazil's rise as the world's leading producer of sugar and the first great plantation colony. Likewise, the sugar trade boosted the economy of Portugal and contributed to the upsurge of the Dutch market. The increasing availability of sugar transformed the European diet (along with some medical theories); and sweets came to play an important part in a variety of social practices. In the political arena, sugar and sugar-producing areas became strategic targets in global conflicts. Furthermore, as this trade expanded, it figured centrally in the evolution of a wide range of financial techniques, business strategies, and institutions of governance--which merchants exploited in order to make their transactions more efficient. The book provides a clear examination of these increasingly sophisticated practices, and shows how they had much in common with today's business operations.

Following forty years of tension between Cuba and the United States, this study of Cuba's agroindustry presents the results of a remarkable collaboration between researchers living in the two countries.

Since its launch, Sugar Trading Manual (STM) has established itself as the definitive information source for the sugar market worldwide. It is compiled from contributions by some of the most senior and widely respected figures in the international sugar trade. This edition takes into account changes in all aspects of the business including production, markets, pricing, contracts, administration and management, and the influence of the major trading blocs. STM is an invaluable training resource for all new entrants to the industry as well as providing everyone already involved in the global sugar business with vital information on its day-to-day workings. The only comprehensive, updateable reference source to the structure and conduct of the global sugar business Written by well-respected industry insiders Covers the entire spectrum of trading instruments and markets

In the late 1630s, lured by the promise of the New World, Andrea Stuart’s earliest known maternal ancestor, George Ashby, set sail from England to settle in Barbados. He fell into the life of a sugar plantation owner by mere chance, but by the time he harvested his first crop, a revolution was fully under way: the farming of sugar cane, and the swiftly increasing demands for sugar worldwide, would not only lift George Ashby from abject poverty and shape the lives of his descendants, but it would also bind together ambitious white entrepreneurs and enslaved black workers in a strangling embrace. Stuart uses her own family story—from the seventeenth century through the present—as the pivot for this epic tale of migration, settlement, survival, slavery and the making of the Americas. As it grew, the sugar trade enriched Europe as never before, financing the Industrial Revolution and fuelling the Enlightenment. And, as well, it became the basis of many economies in South America, played an important part in the evolution of the United States as a world power and transformed the Caribbean into an archipelago of riches. But this sweet and hugely profitable trade—“white gold,” as it was known—had profoundly less palatable consequences in its precipitation of the enslavement of Africans to work the fields on the islands and, ultimately, throughout the American continents. Interspersing the tectonic shifts of colonial history with her family’s experience, Stuart explores the interconnected themes of settlement, sugar and slavery with extraordinary subtlety and sensitivity. In examining how these forces shaped her own family—its genealogy, intimate relationships, circumstances of birth, varying hues of skin—she illuminates how her family, among millions of others like it, in turn transformed the society in which they lived, and how that interchange continues to this day. Shifting between personal and global history, Stuart gives us a deepened understanding of the connections between continents, between black and white, between men and women, between the free and the enslaved. It is a story brought to life with riveting and unparalleled immediacy, a story of fundamental importance to the making of our world.

Focusing on the master-slave relationship in Louisiana's antebellum sugarcane country, The Sugar Masters explores how a modern, capitalist mind-set among planters meshed with old-style paternalistic attitudes to create one of the South's most insidiously oppressive labor systems. As author Richard Follett vividly demonstrates, the agricultural paradise of Louisiana's thriving sugarcane fields came at an unconscionable cost to slaves. Thanks to technological and business innovations, sugar planters stood as models of capitalist entrepreneurship by midcentury. But above all, labor management was the secret to their impressive success. Follett explains how in exchange for increased productivity and efficiency they offered their slaves a range of incentives, such as greater autonomy, improved accommodations, and even financial remuneration. These material gains, however, were only short term. According to Follett, many of Louisiana's sugar elite presented their incentives with a "facade of paternal reciprocity" that seemingly bound the slaves' interests to the apparent goodwill of the masters, but in fact, the owners sought to control every aspect of the slaves's lives, from reproduction to discretionary income. Slaves responded to this display of paternalism by trying to enhance their rights under bondage, but the constant bargaining process invariably led to compromises on their part, and the grueling production pace never relented. The only respite from their masters' demands lay in fashioning their own society, including outlets for religion, leisure, and trade. Until recently, scholars have viewed planters as either paternalistic lords who eschewed marketplace values or as entrepreneurs driven to business success. Follett offers a new view of the sugar masters as embracing both the capitalist market and a social ideology based on hierarchy, honor, and paternalism. His stunning synthesis of empirical research, demographics study, and social and cultural history sets a new standard for this subject.

Located within the plantation economy model of the “New World Group” of The University of the West Indies, this book explores how the changes in the European Union’s sugar regime impacted a sugar-dependent community in Jamaica. It details how the end of centuries of preferential treatment of Jamaican sugar in the British/European market in 2005 worsened the social and environmental realities of the Monymusk community in Clarendon, Jamaica, which depended on the sugar industry. In describing the response of the Jamaican Government to the changes in the EU Sugar Regime, and the subsequent roll-out of an EU funded adaptation strategy, the author provides some unique perspectives on this process, drawing on his experience as a senior civil servant involved in the process. The book also highlights the continued social and environmental impact on the area since 2015 . The book concludes with a discussion on the empirical findings and how those findings contribute to the debates on the dependency perpetuated by the Plantation Economy Model of development and the failure of neo-liberal influenced government policies, as well as the lack of imagination of post-independent governments to break this dependency and deliver on the promise of independence.

“[The International Sugar Trade] is a comprehensive account of sugar, the commodity. [It] is aimed at a wide audience, from specialists looking for more background to traders coming to sugar for the first time, students, nonspecialists, and laymen in search of an introduction to the fascinating world of sugar.” — from the Preface The only complete guide to sugar, one of the world’s most important and heavily traded soft commodities, this authoritative overview provides in-depth coverage of a wide range of essential topics, including: Origins, background, and production The world sugar economy today The sugar futures markets International sugar agreements Consumption trends of substitute products Key issues for the future

How did sugar grow from prize to pariah? Acclaimed historian James Walvin looks at the history of our collective sweet tooth, beginning with the sugar grown by enslaved people who had been uprooted and shipped vast distances to undertake the grueling labor on plantations. The combination of sugar and slavery would transform the tastes of the Western world. Prior to 1600, sugar was a costly luxury, the domain of the rich. But with the rise of the sugar colonies in the New World over the following century, sugar became cheap, ubiquitous, and an everyday necessity. Less than fifty years ago, few people suggested that sugar posed a global health problem. And yet today, sugar is regularly denounced as a dangerous addiction, on a par with tobacco. Masterfully insightful and probing, James Walvin reveals the relationship between society and sweetness over the past two centuries— and how it explains our conflicted relationship with sugar today.