World Sugar History Newsletter

In this issue:

1. Research in Progress
2. Conference Report
3. Book Reviews
4. Archive Report
5. Papers Received
6. An Important Publication
7. New Publications of Interest
8. Norwich Conference

This version of the World Sugar History Newsletter, Number 7, December 1985, has been edited for the purpose of on-line display. The contents remain complete.

[In addition to the lists given in issues nos. 1-6]

Christian Daniels, Koishikawa 3-26-22, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo 112, Japan.
"The technological and economic history of the premodern and modern sugar industry in China and Japan."

Joseph P. Reidy, Department of History, Howard University, Washington, DC, 20059, USA.
"Slave emancipation and the transition to free labour in Louisiana's sugar plantation area."

Hubert Olbrich, Zucker-Museum, Amrumer Str. 32, 1000 Berlin 65, W. Germany.
"History of beet and cane sugar."

Martijn S. C. Baaker, Technische Hogeschool Eindhoven - afd. W & Mw Postbus 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, Holland.
"Dutch beet sugar industry as an innovating branch of industry (1858-1919). A technological and entrepreneurial history."

Huguette Ly-Tio-Fane Pineo, Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Moka, Mauritius.
"From Slave to Citizen: the Mauritius experience."
"Life of slaves on plantations. Their means of livelihood in the post-liberation period."

Peter Griggs, Dept. of Geography, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Australia 4067.
"Plantations to small farms: an historical geography of the sugar industry in the lower Burdekin, North Queensland, Australia, 1880-1930," (PhD thesis).

Frantisek Dudek, Ustav cs. a svet. dejin, CSAV, Vysehradska 49, 128 26 Prague, Czechoslovakia.
"History of the beet sugar industry and other branches of food industry."
"Relations between food industry and agriculture in the 19th and 20th centuries."

The Association of Caribbean Historians held its Seventeenth Annual Conference at the Convention Palace in Havana, Cuba, on April 8-12, 1985. Approximately 90 visiting Association members attended, and they were joined by a numerous contingent of Cuban hosts. Under the able chairmanship of Roy Augier (University of the West Indies, Mona), the Conference proceedings were extraordinarily fruitful and provocative. Twenty-four papers were delivered in panels on "Foreign Investment in the Spanish and French Caribbean, 1899-1930," "Bolivar and the Caribbean," "Church, Society, and Politics in the Caribbean," "Social History in the Caribbean: New Approaches and Methodologies," "Women at Work in the Caribbean," and "Historical Developments in Cuba."

Given the centrality of sugar to the history of the region, nearly all of the papers touched on aspects of sugar and its societal impact. However, three of the papers approached the topic more directly:

I. Manuel Moreno Fraginals (Instituto Superior de Arte, University of Havana), "Peculiaridades de la esclavitud en Cuba" ("Peculiarities of Cuban Slavery").

Professor Moreno Fraginals argues that during the eighteenth century, before the dawn of a full-blown plantation society in Cuba, the social condition and legal status of slaves in that island exhibited wide variations. In the city of Havana, where a service economy predominated, slaves were often found in skilled trades alongside a largely free-black and mulatto population of craftsmen. Meanwhile, in the Havana hinterland, where the sugar revolution began to unfold in the latter eighteenth century, a slave population proportionately larger than in the primate city was subjected to many of the tight controls which were known to plantation slaves elsewhere. Opportunities for social mobility were severely constricted there in comparison to the situation prevalent in Havana. At the same time, eastern Cuba witnessed still another pattern of slavery; there, a predominantly peasant and cattle economy had, through the centuries, allowed for considerable racial admixture and social differentiation of the overwhelmingly free black population. Professor Moreno concludes that while the nineteenth-century sugar boom and liberation movements helped to blur some of these geographic distinctions, the persistence of certain features of the old slave regime means that the "Tannenbaum thesis" cannot be rejected in toto in comparative studies of slavery. Cultural and religious factors may play an important role in defining a slave regime, although they always operate in relation to the "global interests of the dominant class".

II. Patrick Bryan (University of the West Indies, Mona), "The North American Sugar Industry in the Dominican Republic, 1870-1916."

In this survey of North American involvement in the Dominican sugar industry before the military occupation of 1916-24, Professor Bryan highlights the shifting role of United States capital. During the last three decades of the nineteenth century North American interests in the Dominican Republic were principally limited to sugar financing, although this would eventually lead to a more direct ownership role as plantations fell into bankruptcy after the 1884 price collapse. Limited at first to the ownership of a handful of average-sized centrales, North American ownership and investment were boosted after 1905 by the United States' takeover of Dominican Customs. Encouraged by generally favorable prices and a more "stable" political climate -- and one in which American pressure on governmental policies yielded positive results -- existing mills expanded their landholdings and augmented milling capacities. But more importantly, after 1912 the South Porto Rico Sugar Company, a New Jersey corporation which operated a large sugar complex in neighboring Puerto Rico, began purchasing extensive tracts of cane land near La Romana in the south, an investment which led in subsequent years to the establishment of one of the largest sugar mills in the world. "While the years of the occupation . . . were to see even more substantial investment in the sugar industry by United States financiers," the author concludes, "it is true to say that the framework had been established before 1916."

III. Alejandro Garcia (University of Havana): "El binomio del azucar y la inversion extranjera, dos decadas de economia cubana (1900-1920)" ("The Binomial of Sugar and Foreign Investment: Two Decades of the Cuban Economy (1900-1920)").

Michael J. Gonzales, Plantation Agriculture and Social Control in Northern Peru, 1875-1933, Latin American Monographs. University of Texas at Austin, Institute of Latin American Studies, No. 62, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985). Pp. xiii, 235. $28.99.

Professor Gonzales' book is a study of the Peruvian sugar industry between 1875 and 1933, viewed through the experiences of a particular sugar plantation, Cayalti. Located in the northern Peruvian department of Lambayeque, Cayalti was owned by the Aspillagas, a prominent Peruvian family whose wealth, position, and power derived from the estate.

Gonzales follows the fortunes of Cayalti from its purchase in 1859 by Ramon Aspillaga Ferrebu, through Peru's defeat by Chile during the War of the Pacific (1879-83) when many Peruvian estates were damaged and destroyed, the emergence of the new planter class who dominated Peru in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the sugar boom of the First World War, and the crisis produced by the Great Depression. In Part I a brief survey of the history of the Peruvian sugar industry before 1875 is followed by details of its subsequent development, with particular attention to the planters, the sources of capital, estate consolidation, production methods, technological improvements, and markets. One of Gonzales' arguments is that the Peruvian sugar industry remained largely in Peruvian hands during this period, Cayalti being a case in point. In Part II, which constitutes the majority of the book, he focuses on the organization, recruitment, and control of the labour force. On Cayalti, the original Indian workers were succeeded by Chinese coolies, free Chinese, debt peons from the highlands (or enganchados as they were known in Peru), and finally free wage labour. The Aspillagas preferred semi-servile workers whom they could control, by force if necessary, but as the racial composition of the workers changed and proletarianization and politicization occurred, they became less blatantly repressive and turned more to accommodation and paternalism as methods of control. As a result, they managed to avoid the labour unrest that began to disturb the rural sector with increasing frequency after 1912.

One of the more interesting aspects of the book is its revelations about the Aspillagas. Gonzales describes the various pressures with which they had to contend and argues they were more accommodating than many of their neighbours. Nevertheless, the lasting impression is that they were an ambitious, brutal, acquisitive, racialist, penny-pinching lot, whose methods of labour control included the use of capital punishment in the case of their Chinese coolies, whose passion for greater profits involved selling those same coolies opium, and whose meanness prevented them from supplying their highland workers with medicines or even outhouses. The majority of these details come from the Cayalti papers which are stored in the Archivo del Fuero Agrario in Lima. They are excellent for explaining the motivations and actions of the owners, as Gonzales demonstrates, but his reliance on them for explaining the actions of the workers may raise some questions. Nonetheless, he proves from his sections on the employment of the Chinese and the complexities of enganche that they can be used successfully to provide valuable information on the workers. One might like a more coherent underlying thesis and more comparisons with estates in Peru and sugar plantations elsewhere, but this is a readable case study with many informative and entertaining insights that should interest specialists in Latin American history, labour studies, and the sugar industry.

Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power. The Place of Sugar ln Modern History (Elizabeth Sifton Books; New York: Viking; Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985). Pp. xxx, 274. Illustrations. $20.00 and 14.95 pounds.

Everyone who studies the development of sugar production should read this important, challenging, intellectually ambitious book. In most works on the history of sugar the demand for the product plays a vital role, but the social, political, and economic forces which shaped the character and extent of this demand are rarely considered. Nor has anyone tried to understand why sweetness itself should have become such a desirable taste. Professor Mintz sets out not only to investigate this complex phenomenon, as well as why and how patterns of consumption changed, but also to relate it all to the development of sugar production. His view is, however, broader than this in that he wants ". . . to explain what sugar reveals about the wider world, entailing as it does a lengthy history of changing relationships among peoples, societies, and substances." (pp. xxiv-xxv)

While there may be a degree of biological predisposition for sweet things, Mintz argues convincingly that the great variation in diet and amount of sugar consumed indicates that essentially consumption is culturally determined. The culture which he investigates is that of England, for it was here that the first mass market for sugar was created. Why should the English have developed such a voracious appetite for sugar? He attacks this question from various angles throughout the book, for while seemingly a prosaic issue Mintz shows how it can be used to unravel the dynamics of sugar's rise to prominence.

The author first considers briefly the general question of different diets, sweetness, and sugar. He then turns to production and provides an excellent account of how sugar spread from New Guinea from about 8000 B.C. to become the foremost plantation crop in the New World. The central argument here, which is akin to some degree to Eric Williams' thesis, is that there was a clear link between sugar produced on slave plantations and the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe. The nature of that linkage was inordinately complex. He does not, as Williams did, stress the importance of the trade in capital formation, but looks rather at the fact that increasingly inexpensive sugar helped create a new "modern" demand, important in overcoming the leisure preference of pre-industrial labour, and at the same time it reduced the cost of reproducing that labour. This last point is of major importance, is developed more fully later in the book, and emerges as one of the author's principal theses. Because of this and the fact that it derives from Marx's argument about the value of labour power, which is probably not familiar to most readers, it deserves more extended explanation than that offered in a single footnote. Mintz also points to the fact that although employing slave labour, the agro-industrial organization of sugar plantations prefigured in many respects later industry in Europe. But despite their many capitalist features, he correctly argues that the plantations were not capitalist enterprises although they clearly contributed to the development of industrial capitalism. Unfortunately, he devotes only a few pages to the years following emancipation. The major changes in technology and relations of production in the world's sugar industries in the nineteenth century, determined in many respects by the maturing of industrial capitalism in Europe, are not, therefore, given the coverage they deserve.

The most extensive section of the book is that on consumption. It would take a much longer review to do justice to the richness of the material and argument offered here. Mintz discusses in detail the various and changing uses of sugar, as a spice-condiment, decoration, medicine, preservative, and sweetener. He traces how from a luxury sugar became over time a necessity for the masses. The tea-sugar connection is explored in detail and he attempts, with considerable success, to explain the English "sweet tooth".

The meanings which the consumption of sugar acquired are explored in the chapter entitled "Power". The argument is complex and not always very clear, but hinges on trying in the first instance to distinguish between what Mintz calls "inside meanings" ("the meanings people indicate when they are demonstrating they know what things are supposed to mean", p. 151), which mainly emulate those \ adopted by higher social classes and those developed by the working classes themselves. He ties this in to a rather vague concept of power in order to understand the various forces in society which created the heightened demand for sugar. Even if he is not in full accord with it, a more explicit Gramscian formulation of cultural hegemony might have clarified the argument at this point, particularly on how inside meanings were altered. He draws meaning and power together when he writes, "Meaning and power touch this time at the point when a sugar-hungry population had access to well-nigh-unlimited supplies of sugar -- once they were habituated to its use. That is why production must be linked to consumption, and so-called inside meanings to the larger, 'outside' meanings" (p. 178).

In the final chapter, "Eating and Being," Mintz restates many of his arguments and offers a perceptive discussion of a number of present-day issues concerning diet. He shows, for example, that the increased use of sugar in processed foods has resulted from changing socio-economic constraints and cultural patterns. He brings his study to an end with the following: "The first sweetened cup of hot tea to be drunk by an English worker was a significant historical event, because it prefigured the transformation of an entire society, a total remaking of its economic and social basis." It is in analyzing such an apparently mundane event that Mintz is able to open our eyes to the significance of changing patterns of food consumption, and the key role played by sugar.

Enough has been said to suggest the interest and value of this book. The achievement is enhanced when it is remembered that it was written both for the scholarly community and a more general readership. This is not to say it is without problems. The hypotheses could hav e been set out more clearly, the evidence marshalled more systematically, and more control exercised over the quantity of descriptive detail which at times swamps the central arguments. But, despite these shortcomings, Sweetness and Power remains an immensely readable and stimulating work.

Horacio Crespo (ed.), Morelos: Cinco Siglos de Historia Regional (Cuernavaca: Centro de Estudios Historicos del Agrarismo en Mexico and Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos, 1984). Pp. 464. (For price and further information contact Horacio Crespo, Apt. Postal 1159, 62000 Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.)

This is a collection of 25 papers presented by historians, anthropologists, and economists on Morelos's history at a meeting in Cuernavaca, the state's capital, in September\ , 1983. A few of the papers are derivative from scholarship already familiar to Mexicanists, but most are original contributions of considerable interest for scholars and students not only of Morelos but of Mexico at large -- and of sugar around the world.

Morelos is a place of remarkable beauty and high tension. A tiny state immediately south of Mexico's Federal District (i.e. Mexico City), its area not quite 5,000 sq. km. (only 0.25% of the national territory), it is where Hernan Cortes in 1521 started the first cane-sugar plantation on the American mainland, where by 1900 17 plantations with about 3,500 square km. yielded a third of Mexico's sugar, and where between 1910 and 1920 one of the modern world's most determined and significant peasant uprisings, "the Revolution of the South," the Zapatista movement (after its chief, Emiliano Zapata), established the communal claim to land as a principal demand on the country's development for at least the next 65 years.

Even the slight sense that a glance at a relief map of Mexico can give of Morelos's geography and markets is enough to understand why this little region became (and remains) the source of so much sugar. How the plantations there evolved in conflict with native villages during the epoch of Spanish rule, how they adjusted to conditions of independence, and how they expanded and the products from them got to market in the period leading into the Revolution, i.e. the sugar business (toward the end, one trust after another), are subjects of four of the best five papers: Cheryl E. Martin's "Historia social del Morelos colonial" (pp. 81-93); Brigida von Mentz's "La region morelense en la primera mitad del siglo xix" (pp. 131-147); Horacio Crespo's "El azucar en el mercado de la Ciudad de Mexico, 1885-1910" (pp. 165-222); and Enrique Vega Villanueva's "Problemas de cauntificacion en historia regional" (pp. 377-394). The last of these papers, based in part on a major archival discovery by Crespo and Vega Villanueva, an enormous cache of declarations filed in compliance with the state land-tax law of 1909, is especially important. How the planters lost most of their estates after the Revolution is suggested, although barely, by Carlos Gonzalez Herrera and Arnulfo Embriz Osorio in "La reforma agraria y la desaparicion del latifundio en el Estado de Morelos,1916-1927" (pp. 285-298).

Among the historical questions still to be answered about the sugar business in Morelos in this period are: 1) Which plantations changed ownership, from whom to whom, and why? 2) Who bought the railroads, who built them, who benefited, and who suffered from them? 3) Who were the sugar brokers in Mexico City, not just the name of the firms, e.g. Barrios y Murga, but their personal, familial, commercial, financial, and political connections in the capital and elsewhere? 4) Which foreign firms supplied the new milling equipment that planters had installed to expand production? (Is there no collection of El hacendado mexicano y fabricante del azucar in Mexico?)

What is most interesting about Morelos, however, is not sugar but the peasant uprising -- more exactly, the connection between the sugar business and the Zapatistas. The business by itself does not explain the Zapatistas. Modern cane-sugar plantations were also booming in this period in Veracruz, whence came more sugar than from Morelos but no social or political movement comparable in any way to the Zapatistas. A piece of the explanation is clear in Martin's and von Mentz's papers, the institutional survival of native villages in Morelos, which did not happen in the sugar districts of Veracruz. Another indicative point is in the fifth of the five best papers, Catalina Heau's "Trova popular e identidad cultural en Morelos" (pp. 261-273), the quite definite and intense popular provincialism in the state. But the questions remain, why and how did the villages survive, why did local popular culture take the peculiar form it did, and how did it keep its strength?

To answer these questions, research along the following lines may be most useful: migration into, eut of, and inside Morelos in the second half of the 19th century; origins of the peones acasillados (or gente de casa, the plantation's permanent resident laborers) and the harvest gangs; the routes of trade, festivals, and pilgrimages; the townsmen of the district seats, e.g. Cuautla, Jojutla; and the kinships and compadrazgos in villages and between them.

THE BRAGA BROS./CZARNIKOW-RIONDA COLLECTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

The library of the University of Florida at Gainesville has recently acquired a huge collection of papers from the Wall St. firm of Czarnikow-Rionda that is probably the best sinqle source on the 20th-century Cuban sugar trade. Considerably slimmed down from its original 2.1 million documents, the collection now occupies 850 cu. ft. It has been organised and catalogued and is open to qualified researchers.

For most of the 20th century Czarnikew-Rionda and Co. was the main U.S. sugar importer, handling through its affiliate, the Cuban Trading Co., over 20% of raw sugar exports from Cuba. It also came to own six plantations in Cuba, which accounted for about 10% of the country's sugar exports in the half-century prior to the revolution. The company was involved in all aspects of the cane sugar business: cane cultivation, raw sugar manufacture, refining, transport and storage, brokerage and financing. All these aspects are well documented in the collection. Covering the years 1872-1885 and 1895-1969, the collection consists of file material, letter books, account books, cables, and company records. Most of the material is in English and is in excellent condition. It is unlikely that a better source exists outside Havana for the study of all aspects of Cuban sugar.

The library's holdings have been divided into four major record groups and subdivided into 157 record series. The documents in Group 1 (1872-1885) do not relate directly to Czarnikow-Rionda and Co. They concern a number of ephemeral merchant houses established by the brothers Francisco, Joaquin, and Manuel Rionda y Polledo, who emigrated from Asturias around 1870 and established themselves in the Cuba-U.S. sugar trade.

Group 2 (1895-1943) consists primarily of the correspondence, personal financial records, and office files of Manuel Rionda. In 1896 he entered the firm Czarnikow-MacDougall and rapidly became the dominant influence in the company, which reorganised in 1909 as Czarnikow-Rionda. He remained president and chairman of the board until his death in 1943. The material in this group is an important source not only for the sugar trade and Cuban-U.S. relations, but also for political and social developments in the early years of the Republic of Cuba. These are the only executive records in the collection, which does not include the company's minutes nor the papers of Manuel Riond's successors.

Group 3 (1899-1969) is the largest part of the collection, covering 450 cu. ft., and consists of the corporate records of Czarnikow-Rionda. It provides a detailed picture of the firm's day-to-day operations. The records reflect the company's growing complexity, with its evolving executive hierarchy and proliferation of separate departments. The group is subdivided into (i) general reference files and files of company officers, (ii) papers of thirteen departments and sections of the company.

Group 4 (1899-1967) contains the corporate records of 25 affiliated or subsidiary companies. The most important of these are the Manati and Francisco Sugar Companies. Of the six Cuban sugar companies controlled by Czarnikow-Rionda, they are the only ones represented in this collection. When expropriated in 1960, the six companies together were valued at $134 million. The material gives data on production levels and monthly and annual expenses, but no details on day-to-day operations, as the managerial records were kept in New York. Also of notable interest in this group are the records of the McCahan Refining Co., which includes correspondence frem Ellsworth Bunker among others.

In an appraisal of the collection, Professor Herbert Klein of Columbia University writes: "The collection could easily provide the sources for dozens of research projects, from those of a strictly historical nature to those dealing with economics or business administration . . . . It provides possibilities for studying the organization of business practices of a major house in the period 1880-1970, the relations between such a company and the New York banking establishment, the history of a typical Spanish merchant family enterprise operating in America, and finally provides a rather unusual picture of how a family-run company is slowly converted into a modern corporation."

A finding guide to the collection will be available early in 1986. Enquiries should be addressed to:

Muriel McAvoy Weissman, "Officers and Directors of the United States Companies Investing in Cuban Sugars. A Listing with Brief Biographical Data." 1984. [Photocopies available for $10.00 from 48 South Main Street, Concord, New Hampshire, 03301, USA.]

J. H. Galloway, "Tradition and Innovation in the American Sugar Industry, c.1500-1800: An Explanation, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (1985),75:3, pp. 334-351.

Thomas Fock, "Uber Londoner Zuckersiedereien und deutsche Arbeitskrafte," Zuckerindustrie Heft 3, 1985, pp. 233-235; Heft 5, 1985. pp. 426-432.

Frantisek Dudek, "The Transition from Mechanico-Chemical Manufactory Type Plant to the Factory. (Demonstrated by the example of the beet sugar industry in the Czech Lands)," Historical Geography (Historicka ' Geoqrafie) (1978),2, pp. 25-54. (Institute of Czechoslovak and World History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Prague.)

F. Dudek, "Territorial Development of Sugar-Beet and Sugar Production Regions in the Czech Lands at the Time of the Industrial Revolution," Historical Geography (1980), 18, pp. 283-303.

F. Dudek, "Territorial Organization of the Agricultural Industry and its Raw Material Base in the Czech Lands in the 19th Century," Historical Geography (1984), 23, pp. 219-250.

F. Dudek, "Energy Base of the Foodstuffs Industry in Czech Lands during the Industrial and Technical and Scientific Revolution," pp. 67-98, in Energy in History ed. by Jaroslav Purs, Papers of the Fellows of the Institute of Czechoslovak and World History of the CSAS to the 11th Symposium of the International Cooperation in History of Technology Committee (ICOHTEC), Lerbach, Sept. 2-7, 1984.

Barbara L. Solow, (Boston University), "The Transition to Plantation Slavery: The Case of the British West Indies." Paper given at the Colloque International sur la Traite des Noirs, Nantes, July 8-12, 1985.

A list of 23 publications available from the Zucker-Museum. For information write to: Universitatbibliothek der Technischen Universitat Berlin, Abt. Publikationen (BU 316), Budapester Strasse 40, 3. OG, 1000 Berlin 30.

The International Commission for the Co-ordination of Solidarity Among Sugar Workers (ICCSASW) publishes an extremely interesting report four times a year on the plight of sugar workers throughout the world. The report is published in English (Sugar World) and Spanish (Mundo Azucarero), although the two versions are not exactly the same. Besides the reports, the Commission also serves as a centre for information about and mobilizes support for sugar workers. Letters are circulated from unions seeking moral and material assistance. Special reports on important themes are also produced. For example, in July a twelve-page study entitled Violence Against Sugar Workers was published. The subscription details are given below.

SUGAR WORLD is published quarterly by the International Commission for the Co-ordination of Solidarity Among Sugar Workers (ICCSASW), 11 Madison Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5R 2S2, Canada.

Annual Subscription Rates:

• INDIVIDUAL $5.00
• INSTITUTlONAL $10.00
• SUSTAINING $25.00

Back numbers availabie at 50 cents each.
A Spanish edition, MUNDO AZUCARERO, is also published. To become a subscriber, fill out the following form and send it together with a cheque or money order to: ICCSASW. 11 Madison Ave., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA, M5R 2S2.

H. Ly-Tio-Pane Pineo, Lured Away. A Life History of Indian Cane Workers in Mauritius (Moka, Mauritius: 1984), Pp. 256. $1.75 (including postage). Orders to: Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Moka, Mauritius.

Maurice Lemoine, Bitter Sugar (London: Zed Books, 1985), Pp. 336. Hb: 19.95 pounds, $30.95; Pb: 7.95 pounds, $12.25. [Not for sale in USA.] Orders to: Zed Books Ltd., 57 Caledonian Road, London N1 9BU, UK.
This is an English translation of the account of treatment of Haitian workers on sugar estates in the Dominican Republic.

Charles Edquist, Capitalism, Socialism and Technology. A Comparative Study of Cuba and Jamaica (London: Zed Books, 1985), Pp.208. Hb: 16.95 pounds, $26.25; Pb: 6.50 pounds, $9.95.
An important comparative study of the development and innovation of cane harvest technology in the two countries.

Helmut Blume, Geography of Sugar Cane (Berlin: Verlag Dr. Bartins, 1985), Pp. 371. DM 180. Orders to: Verlag Dr. Albert Bartens, D-1000 Berlin 38 (Nikolassee), Luckhoffstrasse 16, Postfach 38 02 05.

Frantisek Dudek, Vyvoj cukrovarnickeho prumyslu v ceskych zemich do roku 1872 (The Development of the Sugar Industry in the Czech Lands before 1872) (Prague: Academia, 1979).

Frantisek Dudek, Monopolizace cukrovarnictvi v ceskych zemich do roku 1938 (Monopoly Capitalism in the Czech Sugar Industry before 1938) (Prague: Academia, 1985).

The aforementioned books will be reviewed in our next issue.

Plans are now well advanced for the conference on the interwar sugar economy. We have received preliminary promises of about 30 papers covering over 22 different countries. Unfortunately, we are having to impose a limit on the numbers attending this meeting, so if you are interested in offering a paper or simply coming along please write as soon as possible to: Bill Albert, School of Economic and Social Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK. The final date for submission of titles is the end of December 1985.

World Sugar History Newsletter compiled by: Bill Albert, School of Economic & Social Studies, UEA, Norwich. Adrian Graves, Department of Economic & Social History, University of Edinburgh. All correspondence to Bill Albert, School of Economic & Social Studies, University of East Anglia, NORWICH, NR4 7TJ, UK.