Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T14:04:40.212Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Machines, modernity, and sugar: the Greater Caribbean in a global context, 1812–50*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2014

José Guadalupe Ortega
José Guadalupe Ortega*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Whittier College, Whittier, CA 90601, USA E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the diffusion of evaporation technology along multi-centred and overlapping scientific, industrial, and commercial knowledge networks. It follows the circulation of vacuum pan (steam evaporator) technology in the Greater Caribbean, the North Atlantic, and the East Indies in order to understand the dual processes of invention and globalization. The article demonstrates that the tropical sugar plantation served as an experimental laboratory and, as such, vital inventions and engineering developments that took place in this space were subsequently incorporated into manufacturing designs in the North Atlantic, helping to modernize European industries in the process. As transient intermediaries, scientists, industrialists, and engineers modified and adapted vacuum pan technologies to meet the local demands of planters in the Greater Caribbean, thereby integrating this area into an increasingly globalized economy.

Keywords

Caribbeanglobalizationintellectual propertysteam technologysugar
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

A preliminary version of this article was presented at the conference of the Latin American Studies Association in San Francisco, on 24 May 2012. The author thanks Adrián López Denis and Daniel B. Rood for our dynamic conversations on sugar and technology, as well as Robert Marks for reading an earlier version of the article. He is grateful to the JGH readers and editors for their insightful and thoughtful suggestions.

References

1 Roberts, Lissa, ‘Geographies of steam; mapping entrepreneurial activities of steam engineers in France during the second half of the eighteenth century’, History and Technology, 27, 4, 2011, pp. 418–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Hilaire-Pérez, Liliane and Verna, Catherine, ‘Dissemination of technical knowledge in the Middle Ages and early modern era: new approaches and methodological issues’, Technology and Culture, 47, 3, 2006, pp. 544–546, 553–4;CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Macleod, Christine, ‘The European origins of British technological predominance’, in Leandro Prados de la Escosura, ed., Exceptionalism and industrialisation: Britain and its European rivals, 1688–1815, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 111–115, 121–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Vleuten, Erik van der, ‘Toward a transnational history of technology: meanings, promises, pitfalls’, Technology and Culture, 49, 4, 2008, pp. 974–994. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Galloway, J. H., The sugar cane industry: an historical geography from its origins to 1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 11–18; Google Scholar

Bosma, Ulbe and Knight, Roger, ‘Global factory and local field: convergence and divergence in the international cane-sugar industry, 1850–1940’, International Review of Social History, 49, 1, 2004, pp. 4–10, 14–16. Google Scholar

5 Curry-Machado, Jonathan, Cuban sugar industry: transnational networks and engineering migrants in mid-nineteenth century Cuba, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 32, 40, 94–5, 100. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Beatty, Edward, ‘Approaches to technology transfer in history and the case of nineteenth-century Mexico’, Comparative Technology Transfer and Society, 1, 2, 2003, pp. 167–197. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Ravesteijn, Wim, ‘Between globalization and localization: the case of Dutch civil engineering in Indonesia, 1800–1950’, Comparative Technology Transfer and Society, 5, 1, 2007, pp. 33–34. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 For similar approaches, see Jeremy, David J., Artisans, entrepreneurs and machines, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998; Google Scholar

Bruland, Kristine, British technology and European industrialization: the Norwegian textile industry in the mid-nineteenth century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Mokyr, Joel, The gifts of Athena: historical origins of the knowledge economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002, pp. 46–48. Google Scholar

9 Mechanics’ Magazine, 17, 468, 1832, pp. 284–6; ibid., 19, 520, 1833, p. 277.

10 Farrer, T. H., The sugar convention, London: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1889, p. 62. Google Scholar

11 Mechanics’ Magazine, 19, 520, 1833, pp. 275–9.

12 Deerr, Noël, The history of sugar, vol. 2, London: Chapman and Hall, 1950, pp. 558–572; Google Scholar

Galloway, Sugar cane industry, p. 137.Google Scholar

13 Engineering: an illustrated weekly journal, 5, 1868, p. 167.

14 Mazumdar, Sucheta, Sugar and society in China: peasants, technology, and the world market, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, pp. 160–162; CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Needham, Joseph, Menzies, Nicholas K., and Daniels, Christian, Science and civilisation in China, vol. 6, part 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 361–363, 410–11. Google Scholar

15 Mazumdar, Sugar, pp. 122–123Google Scholar, 131–3.

16 Mintz, Sidney Wilfred, Sweetness and power: the place of sugar in modern history, New York: Penguin, 1986, pp. 127, 133–9; Google Scholar

Knight, G. Roger, Commodities and colonialism: the story of big sugar in Indonesia, 1880–1942, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 34–38. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, 23, 2, 1813, pp. 129–40; ibid., 29, 2, 1816, pp. 1–6.

18 Mechanics’ Magazine, 19, 520, 1833, p. 277.

19 Deerr, History of sugar, vol. 2, p. 561.

20 Quelch, John Joseph, Catalogue of the exhibits of British Guiana: with notes, Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1893, pp. 7–9. Google Scholar

21 Knight, Commodities and colonialism, pp. 32–34.Google Scholar

22 Crookall, L., British Guiana: or, work and wanderings among the Creoles and Coolies, the Africans and Indians of the wild country, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898, pp. 56–58Google Scholar; Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, 7 June 1902, p. 362, and 6 December 1913, p. 378; Sugar: an English–Spanish technical journal, 22, 1, 1920, p. 609;

Quelch, Catalogue, pp. 7–9Google Scholar;

Savage, Thomas, ed., Manual of industrial and commercial intercourse between the United States and Spanish America, San Francisco: Bancroft Company, 1889, p. 43Google Scholar.

23 Jamaica in 1901, Kingston, Jamaica: Institute of Jamaica, 1901, p. 115.

24 Sugar, 22, 1, 1920, p. 609.

25 Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacture, 6 December 1913, p. 378; Hearings held before the special committee on the investigation of the American sugar refining co. and others, vol. 2, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911, pp. 1775–8.

26 Walker, William, Memoirs of the distinguished men of science of Great Britain living in the years 1807–8, London: W. Walker & Son, 1862, pp. 96–97Google Scholar; American Sugar Industry and Beet Sugar Gazette, November 1912, p. 65;

Koppeschaar, Edward, Evaporation in the cane and the beet sugar factory, London: Normal Rodger, 1914Google Scholar p. 19.

27 Walker, Memoirs, pp. 96–97Google Scholar; Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, 23, 2, 1813, pp. 129–40; Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, 29, 2, 1816, pp. 1–6; Quarterly Review, 29, 57, 1823, p. 482; An impartial report of the debates that have occurred in the two Houses of Parliament, vol. 2, London: T. Chapman, 1797, pp. 641–5.

28 Monzote, Reinaldo Funes, From rainforest to cane field in Cuba: an environmental history since 1492, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008, pp. 131–133Google Scholar, 147–8;

Meniketti, Marco, ‘Sugar mills, technology, and environmental change: a case study of colonial agro-industrial development in the Caribbean’, Industrial Archaeology, 32, 1, 2006, p. 75Google Scholar.

29 Turnbull, David, Travels in the west, London: Longman, Orne, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1840, p. 180Google Scholar;

Checkland, S. G., The Gladstones: a family biography, 1764–1851, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, p. 266Google Scholar.

30 Storey, William K., Science and power in colonial Mauritius, Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 1997, pp. 40–42Google Scholar.

31 Allen, Richard B., ‘The slender, sweet thread: sugar, capital and dependency in Mauritius, 1860–1936’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 16, 2, 1988, pp. 177–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Grove, Richard, Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island Edens, and the origins of environmentalism, 1600–1860, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 184–186Google Scholar, 198–9, 208, 259.

33 Ibid., p. 197.

34 Beaton, Patrick, Six months in Reunion, vol. 2, London: Hurst and Blacett, 1860, pp. 135–137Google Scholar;

Leon, J. A., The sugar question by an European and colonial sugar manufacturer, vol. 2, London: John Ollivier, 1848, pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences, &c, 26 June 1841, p. 414; Year book of facts in science and art, London: Tilt and Bogue, 1842, p. 83.

35 Schnakenbourg, Christian, ‘From sugar estate to central factory: the Industrial Revolution in the Caribbean (1840–1905)’, in Bill Albert and Adrian Graves, eds., Crisis and change in the international sugar economy 1860–1914, Norwich: ISC Press, 1984, pp. 83–94Google Scholar;

Ayala, César J., American sugar kingdom: the plantation economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898–1934, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

Garcia, Fe Iglesias, Del ingenio al central, San Juan, Puerto Rico: Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1998Google Scholar;

Knight, Commodities and colonialism, pp. 55–58.Google Scholar

36 Daniels, John and Daniels, Christian, ‘The origin of the sugarcane roller mill’, Technology and Culture, 29, 3, 1988, pp. 512CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 532, 534.

37 Portuondo, María, ‘Plantation factories, science and technology in late eighteenth-century Cuba’, Technology and Culture, 44, 2, 2003, p. 243CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Galloway, Sugar cane industry, pp. 97–99.Google Scholar

39 Sloane, Hans, A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, vol. 1, London: B.M. for the author, 1707, p. 34Google Scholar;

Daniels and Daniels, ‘Origin’, p. 522.Google Scholar

40 Freedley, Edwin Troxell, Philadelphia and its manufactures, Philadelphia, PA: Edward Young, 1859, p. 328Google Scholar.

41 The correspondence between John Gladstone, Esq., M.P., and James Cropper, Esq., Liverpool: West India Association, 1824, pp. 74–82; Hollett, Dave, Passage from India to El Dorado: Guyana and the great migration, London: Associated University Presses, 1999Google Scholar, ch. 4.

42 Silliman, Benjamin, Manual on the cultivation of the sugar cane, Washington, DC: Francis Preston Blair, 1833, pp. 64–66Google Scholar;

Trust, Graham, John Moss of Otterspool 1782–1858, Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse, 2010, pp. 27–28Google Scholar.

43 Arozarena, Ramón de and Bauduy, Pedro, Informe presentado a la junta de gobierno del real consulado, Havana: Imprenta Fraternal de los Diaz de Castro, 1828, pp. 3Google Scholar, 52;

Fraginals, Manuel Moreno, El ingenio: complejo económico social cubano del azúcar, vol. 1, Havana: Editorial de Ciencas Sociales, 1978, p. 197Google Scholar;

Moore, Jason W., ‘Sugar and the expansion of the early modern world-economy: commodity frontiers, ecological transformation, and industrialization’, Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center, 23, 3, 2000, pp. 414–427Google Scholar.

44 Arozarena and Bauduy, Informe, pp. 9–19Google Scholar, 50;

Higman, B. W., Jamaica surveyed: plantation maps and plans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2001, pp. 145–146Google Scholar.

45 Smith, James, The mechanic, or, compendium of practical inventions, vol. 1, Liverpool: Canton Press, 1818, pp. 139–141Google Scholar.

46 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 63, 388, 1848, p. 233.

47 Hansard's parliamentary debates, vol. 6, London: G. Woodfall and Son, 1848, p. 348.

48 Cave, Stephen, A few words on the encouragement given to slavery and the slave trade, by recent measures, and chiefly by the sugar bill of 1846, London: J. Murray, 1849, p. 33Google Scholar;

Turnbull, David, The Jamaica movement for promoting the enforcement of the slave-trade treaties, London: J. Murray, 1849, p. 305Google Scholar.

49 L'Industriel, 7, 1, 1829, pp. 42–4; McCulloh, Richard, ‘Sugar’, Commercial Review of the South and West, 1, 1, 1849, pp. 56–57Google Scholar.

50 Armengaud, Jacques Eugène, Publication industrielle des machines outils et appareils les plus perfectionnés et les plus récents employés dans les différentes branches de l'industrie française et étrangère, Paris: Chez l'auteur, 1859, p. 283Google Scholar.

51 McCulloh, ‘Sugar’, pp. 56–57Google Scholar; Reports from the Secretary of the Treasury: of scientific investigations in relation to sugar and hydrometers, Washington, DC: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1848, p. 248; Commercial Review, 1, 2, p. 119;

Sproule, John, ed., The Irish industrial exhibition of 1853, Dublin: James McGlashan, 1854, p. 148Google Scholar;

Muspratt, Sheridan and Horsford, Eben Norton, Chemistry, theoretical, practical, and analytical: as applied and relating to the arts and manufactures, vol. 2, Glasgow: William Mackenzie, 1860, p. 984Google Scholar;

Pedder, James, Report made to the beet sugar society of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA: Beet Sugar Society of Philadelphia, 1836, pp. 9Google Scholar, 25.

52 Fraginals, El ingenio, vol. 1, p. 217.Google Scholar

53 Hilaire-Pérez and Verna, ‘Dissemination’, p. 551.Google Scholar

54 Pannabecker, John R., ‘School for industry: L'Ecole d'Arts et Metiers of Chalons-sur-Marne under Napoléon and the restoration’, Technology and Culture, 43, 2, 2002, pp. 254–290CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Horn, Jeff, The path not taken: French industrialization in the age of revolution, 1750–1830, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Dumas, Jean-Baptiste, Traité de chimie appliquée aux arts, Paris: Béchet Jeune, 1843, p. 190Google Scholar; Annual report of the commissioner of patents, for the year 1848, Washington, DC: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1849, pp. 322–3;

M‘Intosh, John Geddes, The technology of sugar, London: Scott, Greenwood, & Co., 1903, p. 180Google Scholar.

57 Blanc, Étienne, Traité de la contrefaçon en tous genres et de sa poursuite en justice, Paris: H. Plon, 1855, p. 635Google Scholar;

McCulloh, ‘Sugar’, p. 58.Google Scholar

58 Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May 1851, pp. 721–4.

59 Byrne, Oliver, ed., Appleton's dictionary of machines, mechanics, engine-work, and engineering, vol. 2, New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1851, p. 633Google Scholar.

60 Fisk, Catherine L., Working knowledge: employee innovation and the rise of corporate intellectual property, 1800–1930, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009, pp. 25Google Scholar, 249;

Clifford, Helen, ‘Concepts of invention, identity, and imitation in the London and provincial metal-working trades, 1750–1800’, Journal of Design History, 12, 3, 1999, pp. 241–255CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Webster, Thomas, ed., Reports and notes of cases on letters patent for inventions, London: T. Blenkarn, 1844, appendix, pp. 1–3Google Scholar.

62 La sucrerie indigène et coloniale, 44, 17, 1894, pp. 470–1; Scientific American: supplement, 24, 624, 1887, p. 9959.

63 La Salle Extension University, Business administration: text prepared by 400 of the foremost educators, business & professional men in America, Chicago, IL: DeBower Chapline Company, 1909, p. 216; Silliman, Manual, pp. 59Google Scholar, 116;

McCulloh, ‘Sugar’, pp. 56–59.Google Scholar

64 Norbert Rillieux, Improvement in sugar-works: specification forming part of Letters Patent no. 3237, dated August 26, 1843, Washington, DC: US Patent Office; Charles Derosne, Improvement in making sugar: specification forming part of Letters Patent no. 4108, dated July 10, 1845, Washington, DC: US Patent Office; McCulloh, ‘Sugar’, pp. 56–59Google Scholar

Kendall, John Smith, History of New Orleans, vol. 3, New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1922, p. 909Google Scholar;

Fortier, Alcée, ed., Louisiana: comprising sketches of parishes, towns, events institutions, and persons, vol. 2, Madison, WI: Century Historical Association, 1914, p. 223Google Scholar.

65 Puente, Wenceslao de Villa-Urrutia y, Informe presentado a la Real Junta de Fomento, de Agricultura y Comercio de esta Isla, Havana: Oficina del Faro Industrial por D.V. de Torres, 1843, pp. 7–16Google Scholar; Public documents printed by order of the Senate of the United States, during the second session of the twenty-ninth Congress, vol. 3, Washington, DC: Ritchie and Heiss, 1847, pp. 64, 83.

66 Leon, Sugar question, p. 19.Google Scholar

67 Fraginals, El ingenio, vol. 1, p. 221.Google Scholar

68 Executive documents printed by order of the Senate of the United States during the first session of the thirtieth Congress, vol. 6, Washington, DC: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1847, pp. 226, 250; Leon, Sugar question, p. 23Google Scholar;

McCulloh, ‘Sugar’, pp. 57Google Scholar, 59.

69 1848 report of the commissioner of patents, pp. 302–3; Freedley, Philadelphia, pp. 434–436.Google Scholar

70 Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, 29 July 1916, pp. 78, 125; Scientific American, 24, 624, 1887, p. 9960; M‘Intosh, Technology of sugar, p. 184.Google Scholar

71 Scientific American, 24, 624, 1887, p. 9960; Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, 8 October 1904, p. 243; Matschoss, Conrad, Die entwicklung der dampfmaschine, Berlin: Julius Springer, 1908, p. 189Google Scholar; Sugar Cane: a monthly magazine, 20, 1888, pp. 141–2.

72 Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, 8 October 1904, p. 243; M‘Intosh, Technology of sugar, p. 185Google Scholar;

Matschoss, Entwicklung, p. 189.Google Scholar

73 Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, 8 October 1904, p. 243; Scientific American, 24, 624, 1887, p. 9960.

74 Exposition universelle de Paris, 1878, section Belge, 2nd edn, Bruxelles: Typographie Ve Ch. Vanderawera, 1878, p. 155; M‘Intosh, Technology of sugar, p. 184.Google Scholar

75 Turgan, Jean François, Les grandes usines de France, Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1863, p. 19Google Scholar.

76 Knight, Commodities and colonialism.

77 Brisse, Léon, Album de l'Exposition universelle, Paris: Impr. l'abeille, 1857, p. 65Google Scholar; Astrea: Maandschrift voor schoone Kunst, Wetenschap en Letteren, 6, 1858, p. 160.

78 Official descriptive and illustrative catalogue, part 4, London: Spicer Brothers, 1851, p. 1146; Tijdschrift ter Bevordering van N Ij Verheid, 7, 22, 1859, p. 24.

79 Brisse, Album, p. 65.Google Scholar

80 Knight, G. Roger, ‘Decrying the bourgeoisie: sugar, capital and state in the Netherlands Indies, circa 1840–1884’, Bijdragen tot de Tall-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 163, 1, 2007, pp. 45–46Google Scholar;

Bosma, Ulbe, ‘The cultivation system (1830–1870) and its private entrepreneurs on colonial Java’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 38, 2, 2007, p. 290CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Tijdschrift voor Neêrlands’-Indië, 8, 4, 1846, pp. 57, 62, 67–8.

82 Bosma, ‘Cultivation system’, p. 290Google Scholar; Curry-Machado, Cuban sugar industry.

83 Tijdschrift voor Neêrlands’-Indië, 8, 4, 1846, pp. 62, 72, 76, 83, 91–2.

84 Knight, Commodities and colonialism, p. 4Google Scholar, n. 6.

85 Ibid., p. 5.

86 Tomich, Dale W., Through the prism of slavery: labor, capital, and world economy, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, pp. 84Google Scholar, 89–92, 132.

87 Curry-Machado, Cuban sugar industry, p. 29.Google Scholar

88 Ulbe Bosma and Jonathan Curry-Machado, ‘Two islands, one commodity: Cuba, Java, and the global sugar trade (1790–1930)’, New West Indian Guide, 86, 3–4, 2012, pp. 240–246Google Scholar, 250, 257;

Curry-Machado, Cuban sugar industry, pp. 23–25.Google Scholar

89 Mechanics’ Magazine, 19, 520, 1833, pp. 275–6; ibid., 17, 468, 1832, pp. 284–7.